


newt/hermann smut drabbles

by buckgaybarnes



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: (in that relationship), 30something hermann/50 something newt, 30something newt/50 something hermann, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - No Kaiju, Alternate Universe - Regency, Anal Sex, Awkward Romance, Beach Sex, Bickering, Coitus Interruptus, Dirty Talk, Face-Fucking, Family Reunions, Finger Sucking, First Time Blow Jobs, First Time Topping, Foursome - M/M/M/M, Gags, Genital Piercing, Guitars, Hand Jobs, Hermann's Rebellious Teenage Years, Lack of Communication, Lipstick & Lip Gloss, Loud Sex, M/M, Multiple Orgasms, Newt's Stamina, Newt's Tie, Nipple Piercings, Nipple Play, Old Married Couple, Oral Sex, Post-Movie: Pacific Rim (2013), Power Outage, Premature Ejaculation, Rivals With Benefits, Sex On Someone Else's Bed, Sexual Fantasy, Stag Nights & Bachelor Parties, Storms, Stripper Newt, Switching, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2020-07-11 17:20:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 24,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19931698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckgaybarnes/pseuds/buckgaybarnes
Summary: A small collection of quick porny Newt/Hermann fics I've written and posted over on my side twitter! Check beginning of each chapter for summary/which tags pertain to which.





	1. Gags

**Author's Note:**

> Newton has a loud mouth. Hermann has a solution. Everyone wins.
> 
> (Loud Sex + Gags + Newt's Tie + Dirty Talk + Anal Sex)

Having sex with Newton is, really, nothing like Hermann’s ever experienced before. Newton is so eager to please, so open to anything Hermann wants to try, so _wildly_ enthusiastic about it all. At the start of their relationship, when Hermann admitted he had little experience in it all, Newton took great pleasure in helping Hermann figure out what he likes; Newton dove into being bound, bent over desks and chairs and tables, called degrading names, even being pushed around, all with the same vigor he dives into his work with. He likes being flattered as much as he likes being insulted, Hermann learns, likes fucking as much as he likes being fucked.

But most of all, Newton likes being _loud_.

The first time, Hermann chalks it up to over-excitement about the new step their relationship is taking—that’s why Newton moans when Hermann so much as touches his hand, why he begs Hermann, louder and louder, to fuck him harder, why he calls out Hermann’s name over and over, why he doesn’t quiet down even when their Shatterdome neighbors pound on the wall and shoot them dirty looks the next morning. After the second time, Hermann is sure the novelty will be over in short time. But Newton doesn’t get any less loud the third time, or the fourth time, or two weeks later, and soon Hermann is fielding noise complaints left and right and getting three emails from HR a day, and then, finally, he’s called in for a meeting with Marshal Pentecost himself.

It’s awkward, to say the least. Pentecost looks like he wants to be there even less than Hermann. “Dr. Gottlieb,” he says, a neat stack of HR complaint forms resting on the desk in front of him, “what you and Dr. Geiszler do on your own time is your business.”

“Sir.” Hermann nods.

“And no one else’s business,” Pentecost adds pointedly.

“Sir.” Hermann nods again.

“Just—” Pentecost pinches the bridge of his nose. “Be a little more...considerate in the future.”

“Sir,” Hermann says, gathers up the remnants of his dignity, and salutes Pentecost before exiting calmly.

Newton’s sitting outside in a little chair, but he jumps to his feet when the office door clicks shut behind Hermann. “Yikes,” he says, once he sees Hermann's expression. “That bad?”

“It’s protocol for him to read each complaint aloud, Newton,” Hermann says. Hermann has never known torture until he had to look Stacker Pentecost in the eyes as he ran through every single complaint, most of which did not shy away from detailing explicitly exactly what Newton was saying to inspire the complaint in the first place. A good deal had to do with unwanted intimate knowledge of the size of Hermann’s genitalia or what position they happened to be enjoying the night in question. An even greater deal contained some bitter variation of _Dr. Geiszler moans like a whore_. 

“I can be quiet,” Newton promises, and sidles up into Hermann’s personal space. He brushes their lips together in a quick kiss, and his hands start to wander south. Right in the middle of the bloody hallway. “I can be _so_ quiet.”

Another observation about sex with Newton: Newton is the most insatiable man Hermann has ever met. Hermann has yet to find fault with _this_ , however.

Newton is good for him when Hermann fucks him that night, only half the volume he usually is. He bites down on his lip so hard he draws blood and emits only the softest little whines when Hermann spreads his soft legs and works him open. “Very good,” Hermann murmurs, pleased, in his ear, twisting his fingers. Newton doesn’t dissolve into loud, needy moans like he usually does. Already an improvement. Hermann intends to kiss those tiny teethmarks better as a reward when they're done. “You’re doing wonderfully, Newton. Does that feel good?”

Newton nods frantically. Hermann strokes one index finger against the tight walls and Newton’s prick jerks against his stomach, but he doesn’t make a sound above a whimper. “Very good, Newton,” Hermann repeats—though he can’t help but miss Newton’s stream-of-consciousness ramblings. He takes Newton’s prick in his free hand, rubs his thumb against the slit. It comes away slick and sticky. It does not take much to work Newton up.

“Come on,” Newton whines, clutching at the sheets, “fuck me already, dude, I’m ready, I’m ready—”

“Quiet,” Hermann says sternly (never quite liking when Newton calls him _dude_ during their more intimate time spent together), but he pulls his fingers from Newton and nudges Newton’s thighs wider apart. He settles over him, one hand cupping his cheek soothingly. Newton keens and leans into the touch. “You have to be—” Newton digs his nails into Hermann’s lower back, urging him forward, lips parted, breath coming out in sharp, frantic pants. His enthusiasm, as always, is infectious. Hermann latches onto his soft bottom lip in a hard kiss and pushes in.

Newton _is_ good for him that night—but only at first. The second he adjusts, and Hermann begins to roll his hips, Newton stops kissing him and drops his head against the pillows and he’s back to his usual volume. “Hermann,” he moans, “oh, Hermann, you’re so _sexy_ —”

“Quiet,” Hermann gasps, even as Newton’s words spur him on.

“I love your cock,” Newton’s almost shouting, and Hermann flushes in equal parts lust and mortification, “I love your big cock—fuck me _faster_ , c’mon—”

“Newton—”

“ _Faster_ , oh, Hermann—!” Newton claws at his back, wrap his legs around his waist and he’s so hot, so tight, Hermann can scarcely remember why he wanted Newton to be quiet in the first place. (He doesn’t want Newton to be quiet, he wants to drag every sound from him he can.) “Hermann,” Newton repeats shrilly, “Hermann, you’re so _big_ —”

There’s heavy, violent knocking on the wall, just like every night, and Hermann presses his face into the sweaty skin of Newton’s neck and swears. He doesn’t still his hips, though. “Newton, you have—” Newton squeezes around him, whimpering, and Hermann swears again. “—you have to be _quiet_ , you—”

“I don’t _want_ to be,” Newton moans, “I want—” Hermann grazes in deep and Newton makes a noise that brings the knocking back with a vengeance. “ _Oh_ , right there, yeah, yeah, _fuck_ me with that big—” The pounding on the wall gets louder, almost as loud as Newton, and Hermann’s blood runs cold at the thought of another meeting like today and—in sheer desperation—he covers Newton’s mouth with his hand.

Newton’s eyes widen, half in shock and half in—if his deep, filthy, muffled moan is anything to go by—excitement. For a moment, Hermann stares back, surprised at himself too, frozen in place. But: the knocking’s stopped, and Newton’s grinding himself down against Hermann’s cock, so he’s clearly not opposed. Hermann thinks he’ll see where this goes. He starts fucking Newton again, harder. “You promised,” Hermann pants, as Newton starts clawing at his back once more and moaning behind Hermann’s hand, “you promised you’d be good, but you weren’t, do—do I need to gag you? Gag—” Hermann screws his eyes up tight, breathing hard into Newton’s neck. “—that lovely loud mouth of yours?”

“Mm!” Newton agrees empathetically. He could use Newton’s tie, definitely, just shove it into his mouth, maybe loop it around and knot it so he can’t make a sound. It’s here on the bed, somewhere, along with the rest of Newton’s clothing, and Hermann gropes around with his free hand as he continues fucking into Newton, and then—

“I’m going to uncover your mouth,” Hermann’s still panting, “for _one_ second. Can you be good?” Newton eyes the tie in his hand and nods frantically again. Hermann pulls his hand away.

“This is so _sexy_ ,” Newton immediately shouts, “oh my God, oh my God—!” Hermann hastily shoves the thin black fabric into Newton’s mouth, ties it around the back of his head, and Newton continues making loud, incoherent, excited sounds around it. He’s still noisy, but the gag does an effective job of shutting up the worst of it, and the knocking hasn’t resumed.

“When we’ve won,” Hermann says, fucking Newton as fast as he pleases, rubbing his thumb across the head of Newton’s prick as Newton writhes in pleasure, and he’s so lost in everything himself he’s not even sure what words are spilling from his mouth, “we’ll—oh—we’ll move to the middle of _nowhere_ and, and you can be as loud as you want, darling, we’ll make love for hours, is that—?” Newton nods again, shouting muffled gibberish, and Hermann wonders—if they ever got the chance—if he could make Newton _scream_.

It doesn’t take either of them long after that, especially not with Newton as wound up as he is: Newton comes and Hermann fucks him through it and, as Newton wails and shouts and tosses back and forth, Hermann follows, swearing and biting at Newton’s shoulder.

Newton’s tie is almost definitely ruined, and Hermann tosses it to the floor in disgust once he’s undone it. “Can we do that again, like, tomorrow?” Newton says, in between the post-coital kisses he always insists on having. Hermann has no problem with these, and he has no problem with how Newton cuddles up to him happily. “That was so hot, Hermann.”

“Perhaps,” Hermann hums. He kisses the top of Newton's head with a small smile.


	2. Lipstick

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Red suits Newton. Newton happens to think it suits Hermann, too.
> 
> Lipstick & Lip Gloss + Oral Sex + Face-Fucking

“Red suits you,” Hermann says. He feels hot under his collar. Newton grins up at him between his legs—his lips painted a deep, deep crimson—and Hermann stifles a moan. Newton presses a kiss to the inside of Hermann’s thigh, staining his pale skin with a crimson pout. The rest of Hermann’s body is decorated similarly: lipstick stains litter his neck, his chest, his lower abdomen, the skin of the opposite thigh. So much so that Newton’s had to reapply the color twice.

“It suits you, too,” Newton says. He lifts his head up, flicks his tongue out between those red lips to so _lightly_ brush at Hermann’s prick. Hermann lifts a hand to card through his hair shakily; Newton catches it, stains Hermann’s fingertips with another kiss. Hermann groans, nods.

Newton flicks his tongue across the tip again, then slides the head past his lips with a little moan (getting Hermann off like this usually gets him off, too), and Hermann watches the crimson _stretch_ around his prick with a deep, jolting thrill. “Yes,” Hermann sighs, as Newton sucks in more, more, taking him in as deep as he can. When he’s brushing the back of Newton’s throat, Newton swallows around him, blinking up at Hermann with wide eyes. Hermann cups his jaw, thumbs at Newton’s soft, painted bottom lip. “Lovely,” he says. “You’re—”

Newton swallows again, then pulls up slowly, teases his tongue over the slit while Hermann rubs his jaw. A bit of lipstick’s smeared when Hermann was stroking his lip. Hermann is suddenly struck with the fierce, _burning_ desire to mess him up like that some more. He strokes his thumb at Newton’s bottom lip again as Newton sucks and teases the head of his prick, more red smearing down to his chin, and Newton moans almost immediately, pulls off with drool slicking his lips. “Yes,” he gasps, “do that—” He slides his mouth back down around the thickest part of Hermann's prick, sucking a little harder, and Hermann bucks shallowly into his mouth in surprise.

But Newton takes him in eagerly, moans once more, gently presses on Hermann’s hips to urge him to repeat it. Something deep in Hermann stirs (his restraint crumbling, the sheer eroticism of his prick disappearing between Newton’s red lips, perhaps the desire to see Newton messy with lipstick and his release finally winning out) and he grips Newton’s lipstick-streaked chin to hold him in place and snaps his hips forward. “ _Newton_ ,” he moans, and does it again, and Newton gags and moans enthusiastically.

Hermann holds Newton still and fucks his face (the way Newton loves _and_ Hermann loves) while Newton shudders and moans, and drool is running down his chin, and once Hermann finally closes his eyes and comes down Newton’s throat with a deep grunt Newton pulls off and gives him a broad smile. Ejaculate and spit and lipstick smear his lips exactly as Hermann hoped it would. (Red suits him.)

“Next time,” Newton says, voice hoarse, “let’s try pink.”


	3. Piercing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hermann's just got the mouth for it, you know?
> 
> Oral Sex + First Time Blow Jobs + Genital Piercing

“I just can’t believe you’ve never done it, is all,” Newt says.

“Is it really so astounding?” Hermann says. “There are plenty of things I’ve not done. Fenced.” He brushes his fingers over Newt’s arm, down one stylized kaiju. “Gotten a tattoo. Gone scuba diving.”

“Scuba diving is a lot different than sucking dick, Hermann,” Newt points out.

Hermann goes pink in the face. Really, it’s a bizarre sight, and a bizarre scenario—that Hermann’s getting all riled up over Newt saying _sucking dick_ , when they’re stripped down to their fucking underwear and Hermann’s sprawled out between Newt’s legs with full intentions to engage in the act in question very, very soon. The whole day’s been bizarre. One minute it’s the end of the world, the next, your lab partner’s in your head, the next, he’s in your pants. If Newt knew he would be getting down and dirty with Hermann Gottlieb for the first time when he woke up this morning, you know, he would’ve put on moderately sexier underwear.

“There’s no need to be crass,” Hermann says.

“Dude,” Newt says.

Hermann sniffs. “Why are you so surprised, at any rate?”

“To be honest,” Newt says, with a shrug, “you have the mouth for it.”

Hermann’s fingers jump, almost instinctively, to his mouth—big, wide-lipped, and really weirdly sexy, in, like, a frog way. Newt’s spent many lonely nights in his Shatterdome bunk imagining what his dick would look like between those lips. “Oh,” Hermann says. He lowers his hand. “Well. If you must know, I’ve never done anything of the sort.”

This takes Newt twice as much by surprise. “ _Never_?” he says. He knows Hermann’s dating history consists of exactly one young man from his university days, but Hermann’s—well, he’s not exactly what you might deem a _catch_ , not unless you’re into that sort of thing (Newt is), but he just assumed Hermann’s elegant bone structure and long eyelashes would’ve made boys flock to him left and right in his youth. Newt would’ve flocked to him. Newt would’ve gladly taken one for the team the day they met and tested out what that mouth can do. “This is a lot more pressure than I anticipated.”

“Hush,” Hermann says, and he pulls Newt’s boxers off.

Newt waits with bated breath as Hermann scrutinizes him.

“Hm,” Hermann finally says.

Newt’s heart sinks. “Disappointed?” he says.

“Well,” Hermann says, “only, you know, I haven’t got much to _compare_ it to—”

“ _Oh_ ,” Newt says, and, in a rush, “Uh. It’s above average. Definitely. You hit the jackpot, baby.” He wiggles his hips a little. Hermann shrinks back.

“It’s _pierced_ ,” he says.

“Pretty sexy, right?” Newt says. He got the piercing when he was twenty-one and going through a little phase, but if Hermann likes it, it’ll have been worth it.

Hermann sweeps his eyes up and down, from pierced tip to base, twice more, before saying “Hm,” again. Newt feels vaguely like one of his equations. It’s kinda sexy. And intimidating. “You’ll need to walk me through it,” Hermann finally declares.

“It’s a blowjob,” Newt says. “You just—suck.”

Hermann narrows his eyes.

Newt sighs. “Okay, okay. Open your mouth,” he says.

Hermann obliges, lips parting, tongue extending very slightly. He arches an eyebrow, as if awaiting approval. Newt’s happy to give it to him. “Yeah,” Newt says. “Now just—” He takes his steadily hardening dick in hand, and, at a loss for what else to do, prods the pierced tip against Hermann’s mouth. It leaves a small smear of precome across his bottom lip.

Hermann jerks back again. “Oh,” he says, tongue swiping over the spot, nose scrunching up. “It tastes—strange.” He eyes the piercing. “The metal’s cold.”

“Yeah,” Newt says, only half-paying attention and feeling a little fuzzy all over. Holy shit, did that look so incredibly fucking hot. “Okay, uh, mouth open, I wanna—”

Hermann’s mouth—warm, wet, inviting—falls open again; Newt pushes the head of his dick all the way in. “Suck,” he orders, far more confidently than he actually feels. Hermann’s lips close in a tight seal around him, and, for a moment, Newt enjoys the tight, hot sensation of it all, of how fucking _good_ it feels, how good it looks, and then Hermann’s tongue flicks against his piercing. Newt’s hand flies up to cup his cheek.

“ _Nn_ ,” he squeaks. “Ah. Hermann—”

Hermann sucks at him a little harder, tonguing at the piercing and the sensitive skin below it. The corners of his eyes crinkle in amusement. Newt pats, frantically, at Hermann’s cheek; he can already feel pressure building in the pit of his stomach. “Okay!” he yelps. “Ease up, or I’m gonna—”

Hermann pulls off with an obscene, exaggerated _pop_. A trail of spit leads from his lips. “Already?” he says, deeply patronizing.

“Jackass,” Newt pants. “I’m—out of practice.” Hermann waits patiently for him to catch his breath and calm down a little. At least enough to last more than a minute. “Okay,” Newt says, and Hermann parts his lips obediently again.

Newt has some fun dragging his dick across Hermann’s mouth and tongue, if not just to hear Hermann’s breath speed up and watch his pupils dilate, and then—after a second of consideration—slaps it gently against his cheek. Hermann startles.

“Why did you do _that_?” he says.

“It’s sexy,” Newt says, and drags it over to the other cheek to slap it there, too, twice this time. He leaves behind a streak of precome on that nice, sharp cheekbone. “Yeah. You like that, baby? You like how that feels?”

“Not particularly,” Hermann says.

“Lemme try the other side again,” Newt says.

He does. Hermann hums skeptically. “You said it’s meant to be sexy?”

“I saw it in a porno once,” Newt admits. It seemed sexy then. It seemed sexy when he imagined doing it to Hermann, too. “Hey, can you use your hand?”

After a few awkward slapping pats, uncomfortably reminiscent of how Hermann had taken his hand earlier that evening (and now Newt’s gotta wonder how Hermann jerks off, you know), Hermann manages to wrap his long fingers fully around the base of Newt’s dick. He gives it a single dry stroke that would be a little painful if it wasn’t so hot. “Like this?” he says.

“Guh,” Newt says.

Hermann’s mouth quirks up into a smile; his eye crinkles return. “You’re _very_ sensitive,” he says, and tightens and untightens his fingers a few times. Getting a good grip. He gives Newt a few languid, lazy strokes. That’s the thing Newt’s always admired about Hermann: he’s a very fast learner. “Are you this sensitive all over?”

“Yeah,” Newt whines.

Hermann leans in and drags his tongue over Newt’s slit.

Newt comes all over his face.

He makes up for it with an embarrassed, but loving nonetheless, handjob ten minutes later, at least.


	4. Regency

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hermann and Newton are forced to spend the night in their laboratory.
> 
> Alternate Universe - Historical/Regency + Storms + Sexual Fantasy

It is not, necessarily, that Hermann’s father does not approve of Newton Geiszler. Hermann’s father does not approve of anyone, not unless he has something to gain from doing so, and he certainly has nothing to gain from any poor and low-standing acquaintance of Hermann’s. Regardless of motive, the point at hand is that Hermann’s father’s refusal to invite Newton to any dinner parties or dances at the Gottlieb estate has never felt _truly_ torturous until now. Instead of joining Newton in their research laboratory and spending the night working and conversing and maybe even sharing a drink or two together, he was forced to make small talk with people he hardly knows and wait until all were gone before he could finally dash out to see Newton.

By that point, the sun has long since set and it’s raining quite heavily out. Sleeting, really. He and Newton installed bunks in their laboratory long ago, after being snowed in once, so Hermann decides he’ll simply pack a bag and stay there the night to avoid being soaked both ways. “Don’t expect me ‘til tomorrow,” he tells the household staff, and—avoiding his father, who’ll surely attempt to talk Hermann out of going—departs with a single, polite bow.

Newton meets him at the door, shielding his eyes from the sleet with his arm and gesturing frantically for Hermann to come inside. “There’s a fire on,” he shouts. “Come in before you freeze to death.”

Inside is warm, well-lit, comfortable; a pot of water boils over the fire in the hearth, their research spreads out across tables, their favored chairs piled high with fire-warmed blankets that Newton pushes him into the instant he strips him of everything save for his undergarments and stockings. He shoves a cup of tea into his hand a moment later. As the chill of the night leaves Hermann’s bones, Newton settles himself into the chair opposite Hermann—his chair, more of a chaise than anything, he does so like stretching his limbs out across it—and wrings out his braid. It’s damp from even his seconds-long foray out into the storm. “How was the party?” he says.

“Horrid,” Hermann says. “Tedious. I couldn’t get away fast enough.” He balances his tea cup on the arm of his chair and digs around in the bag at his feet, then tosses a small sack at Newton.

Newton catches it. “What’s—?” he opens it, and grins. “Hermann, you’re _incredible_.”

Newton is very partial to the small, pink-frosted teacakes they serve for dessert at Gottlieb parties, so Hermann always makes a point of stowing some away during each one and bringing them to Newton after. It never fails to cheer Newton outrageously, and Hermann has a certain vested interest in making Newton happy. Newton digs into them now, finishing three before Hermann even gets halfway through his tea. “Were you working?” Hermann says.

Newton swallows. There’s frosting in the corner of his mouth. “I was,” he says. “It’s nothing important. I can—”

“No,” Hermann says. “Please, work. I only wanted some peace.” He casts a glance at the small hutch where they keep their liquor, mostly bottles Hermann’s requisitioned from his father’s supply. “And perhaps some brandy.”

Once Newton’s had his fill of cake, he relinquishes the chaise to Hermann and brings him both brandy and a glass, then snuffs out most of the candles in the room, leaving the fire and a few melting stubs at his desk as the only light sources. Hermann stretches out in Newton’s place and settles in to enjoy the peace. And really, it is quite peaceful: the scratching of Newton’s quill on paper, the way the firelight casts shadows on the walls and a warm glow on Newton’s face. Newton’s rolled his sleeves up to his elbows, exposing strong, delicately-inked forearms, and Hermann watches his muscles flex and strain as he works. 

He’s lovely. He’s always lovely—lovely, brilliant, unique Newton. His Newton.

With Newton so close, and with little else to occupy Hermann’s mind besides his adoration for the man, Hermann soon finds himself slipping into fantasy. How easy it would be to cross the room and take Newton into his arms...

Newton drags his fingers through the strands of hair that have escaped his braid, slips his fingers to his throat and unties his cravat, giving Hermann a glimpse of his soft neck. Hermann takes too large a sip of brandy and coughs on it; Newton’s attention is caught, and his quill stills and his eyes snap up. “Are you alright?”

Hermann coughs a few more times, and before he can assure Newton he _is_ , Newton is kneeling at his side, hovering his hands anxiously over Hermann’s chest, his throat, finally settling on his arm. “I’m fine,” Hermann finally wheezes out. “Swallowed poorly. Thank you, Newton.”

Newton does not lift his fingers. Hermann’s awareness of his own comparative nakedness and how _close_ they are (he can smell sugar on Newton’s breath) catches up to him, and he blushes deeply. “Newton,” he begins, and Newton pulls away like he’s been shocked. 

“Oh,” he says, “I’m sorry,” and hurries back to his work.

The sleet continues to pound away at the roof by the time Hermann has had his fill of brandy and even some of the cakes, and Newton has finally called it a night for his work. “Not a chance in hell I’m going back out there,” Newton declares, peering out one of the windows.

“One of us will have to if we’re going to stay,” Hermann tsks, looking to their miserable woodpile, where only two logs remain. They’ll certainly freeze in the night if they don’t venture out to the woodshed and bring in a few more. Hermann does not want to presume, but it’s difficult to carry more than one or two at a time with his cane. Newton nods, already reaching for his thick overcoat. 

“I’ll be back in no time,” Newton declares. He’s out the door with a wink.

He’s drenched by the time he comes back, having taken off his overcoat and wrapped the logs up in it to prevent them from getting wet, and he tosses the whole bundle to the ground the second he shuts the door behind himself. “Wow!” he says, shaking his hair out of his eyes.

It’s Hermann’s turn to fret. “Out of those,” he orders, hoisting himself to his feet with his cane. “Into something dry. Come on—”

Newton swears. “This is all I’ve got!”

Hermann eyes his bag, still on the ground by the hearth, and imagines he can make a tiny sacrifice for Newton tonight.

Newton does not quite fit into Hermann’s night shift—his arms are too built, his hips too wide, he’s too short for it, and the fabric pulls taut over his stomach —but it’s a step up from going to bed in wet undergarments. Or nothing. “You don’t mind?” Newton says, plucking awkwardly at the laces at the front, eyeing Hermann up in his—thankfully dry—undergarments.

“Not at all,” Hermann says. “Are you comfortable?” Newton nods. Hermann smiles and clapses his friend’s hand. “Then I certainly don’t mind.”

Their beds here are more cots than anything, stowed into two opposite corners of a tiny adjacent room, and they keep a candle burning on the small table between them. Enough that neither of them will trip should they need to get up in the middle of the night. They retire at the same time, and without much conversation, which surprises Hermann—usually, when they meet here, they stay up well past midnight discussing theories and research and arguing good-naturedly (and sometimes _not_ so good-naturedly). Newton is tired, he supposes. Hermann is tired too.

The storm persists into the night, and Hermann lays awake and watches Newton sleep soundly. Newton in his clothing is quite a sight. The night shift has bunched up around Newton’s thighs, and in the tangle of blankets Hermann can make out smooth, freckled skin. Smooth, freckled, _bare_ skin.

Hermann cannot help the surge of arousal that stirs deep within him. He shuts his eyes. Surely—and guilt mixes with his arousal—Hermann’s friend will not begrudge him another fantasy. Even if it is about him. Newton does not need to know. (Newton, touching himself through the fabric of the shift, gasping in pleasure, lifting the skirt and begging Hermann to take him…)

“Hermann,” Newton murmurs quietly, and Hermann’s eyes snap open in mortification and he pulls his hand from his undergarments . Newton stands as his bedside, oddly flushed. He’s fiddling with the laces of the shirt. Hermann did not hear him wake, nor did he hear him cross the room.

“Newton!” Hermann says. “I—”

Newton kneels on the edge of his bed and takes his hand, as Hermann had earlier. “I heard you,” he says. “I’m sorry, but I—you said my name.”

Hermann says nothing.

Newton presses Hermann’s hand to his newly-bared chest, and lifts the hem of the shift; Hermann can see the red-flushed head of his arousal, how it hangs low between his legs. “Hermann,” he says.

The seduction is clumsy and it wins Hermann over instantly, like the dam of his love for his odd, strange colleague is finally bursting. He drags Newton into bed with him, showering him in kisses, tangling his fingers in his long hair and tugging. Newton is better than any fantasy could be: his mouth is still sweet from the cake, his body soft and warm and heavy atop Hermann, and when they rock together, he moans so prettily that Hermann feels wild with desire. (“It’s been so long,” Hermann gasps, eyes wet with emotion, “so long, Newton, I’ve wanted you so—”

“Me too,” Newton breathes, and he laughs into their kisses. “For _ages_. I never—”)

They do not speak much, after their confessions, nothing but each other’s names and soft oaths. “Yes,” Newton says, and “ _there_ ,” and “I love you, I love you, I love you,” and Hermann much of the same, and they shudder through their releases in each other’s arms.

Tomorrow, they will consider the consequences on their daily lives of the marked change in their relationship, but tonight Newton sleeps in his arms.


	5. Strip

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hermann is engaged to a man he doesn't love at the behest of his father, and Newt is strange and funny and pretty.
> 
> Stag Nights & Bachelor Parties + Stripper Newt + Awkward Romance + Alternate Universe - No Kaiju

As a general rule, Hermann hates parties. He hates being around people he doesn’t know. He hates loud music. He hates tight rooms. He hates people spilling drinks on him and jostling elbows into him. He hates _small talk_. Hermann’s idea of a good celebration is locking himself, alone, in his flat, in complete silence, and then maybe organizing his desk before taking a long nap. He’s spent every birthday since he was sixteen like that. He would’ve much preferred it for tonight, too.

Instead, he’s sitting in the corner of his living room with a feather boa around his neck and a very, very deep scowl on his face while a dozen men he knows only in the vaguest terms take shots and shout nonsense at each other. They all wanted to take him to a strip club at first, but after Hermann reminded them that he was quite gay and there was a very, _very_ slim chance he’d enjoy himself at the one they picked, and an equally slim one they’d enjoy themselves at one he’d pick (if he even went for those sorts of things), they relocated it to his flat. 

(“It’s tradition, Gottlieb,” one of his colleagues told him, good-naturedly, two weeks prior. He’d gathered up a group of them—other researchers, someone Hermann recognizes from accounting—to troup into his office and pressure him into it. Probably at the behest of Hermann’s father. He’s always trying to get Hermann to do nonsense like this. Not because he cares about Hermann’s social life—he just wants content employees, and if he has to spring a few bucks to do it, so be it. “It’s just a few drinks, some food. It’s fun.”

“I don’t drink,” Hermann said.

“One last night of freedom before you get hitched,” another one said. “ _Rick’s_ having one.”

This was news to Hermann. He and Emmerich were not—well. Perhaps they did not communicate as much as they should, but Hermann thought his fiance might’ve at least told him _that_. “He is?”

After this it was decided.)

It’s nine; they’ve been at this for two hours. Surely they must be getting tired, Hermann thinks hopefully. Surely they must want to _leave_ soon.

Hermann’s doorbell rings. _Damn_ it.

No one makes any move to open the door, so Hermann rips the feather boa off, fumbles for his cane, and storms over to do it himself. The furious “ _Yes_?” on the tip of his tongue dies away the moment he sees who’s standing there: a startlingly _pretty_ man in a white labcoat and a thick pair of glasses, sporting a Bluetooth speaker in one hand and a pair of lab goggles in the other. He smiles coyly up at Hermann. 

“Are you Dr. Hermann Gottlieb?” he says.

Hermann nods. “Yes,” he says. “Ah. You are—?”

“You can just call me Newt,” the man says. “Your friends hired me for the party?”

“They hired a doctor?” Hermann says.

Newt laughs. “Dude,” he says, and it’s then that Hermann notices his white fishnet tights (which lead, curiously, to a dirty pair of boots), the sheer amount of glitter in his tousled hair, his delicate black eyeliner and mascara, “I’m the stripper. Can I come in already? I’m on the clock.”

Hermann flushes horrendously and ducks aside to allow Newt to enter. “Oh! Of course,” he says, stammering a bit, “ah, forgive me, I wasn’t aware—I didn’t know you’d be coming, is all. They didn’t tell me.”

“Stripper’s here!” one of Hermann’s colleagues yells. There’s a smattering of whoops and hollers, the music is shut off, and someone snags the back of Hermann’s blazer and reels him over to one of the dining chairs before he can protest. The feather boa is flung over his shoulders once more. A trucker hat (with _Groom #2_ written across it) is shoved atop his head. His cane is whisked away.

He feels rather ridiculous.

Newt sets his speaker down on the coffee table and switches out his glasses for the goggles while Hermann looks around, nervously, at his colleagues. Is he meant to sit there? Is he meant to call Newt over? He’s never so much as watched porn before. “I’m sorry,” he says, and Newt looks up from the iPod he pulled from a pocket, “ah, I’ve never—”

“Just sit back and relax, Dr. Gottlieb,” Newt says. He gives Hermann another smile. “I’m doing all the work.”

Hermann does sit back. He does relax, for a bit, too, taking in all of Newt (pretty green eyes, freckles, a softness to him despite his stockiness that make Hermann’s heart pound—not at all like Emmerich’s hard lines and broad shoulders) and considering how he would not mind seeing, er, more of him, but then Newt kicks his boots off and switches his iPod on and begins to saunter towards Hermann.

Hermann’s anxiety skyrockets. “You don’t have to—”

“ _Relax_ ,” Newt says. He flicks open a few more buttons slowly and stops about halfway down his torso; there, he puts on a show of a struggle. “I think it’s stuck,” he says, and bats his eyes at Hermann. “Can _you_ help me, Dr. Gottlieb?”

“I suppose,” Hermann says faintly.

Newt takes one of Hermann’s hands and drags it just as slowly down to the button, where Hermann undoes it quite quickly. He holds Hermann’s wrist before he can pull away. “Can you get the rest for me, too?” he says.

“Can’t you?” Hermann chokes out.

“Come on, Gottlieb!” one of his colleagues says.

Flushing hot once more, from the tips of his ears to the back of his neck, Hermann undoes the rest of Newt’s white labcoat. It falls back to reveal a skimpy blue lingerie set (lace panties, a bralette, a garter belt) and, curiously, a large expanse of intricately inked skin. He reaches out and touches one red-yellow wave above Newt’s pectoral before he can help himself; Newt shivers and bats his hand away. “Easy, big boy,” he scolds. “Don’t get too eager.”

Big boy. “I wasn’t—” Hemann begins, but Newt presses a finger to his lips and—to Hermann’s _further_ surprise—clamors into his lap. He flicks off the ridiculous hat. “ _Oh_.”

Newt’s hands go to the back of Hermann’s head, where he threads his fingers in Hermann’s short hair, and he begins to gyrate his hips. Hermann wheezes a little. Not in the least because of the strain on his leg. He flutters his own hands about anxiously, unsure where to put them. “You’ve got one lucky fiance,” Newt purrs. “Sexy _and_ smart. What’s that big PhD in?”

“Astrophysics,” Hermann says. Newt’s bralette is a mere inch from his nose. 

Newt’s rhythm stutters, but only for a moment. “Oh, _cool_. I considered doing that for one of mine but it went right over my head.”

“One—” Hermann furrows his brows, blinking at Newt hazily, certain he misheard, “—one of yours?”

Newt doesn’t answer him. “You can touch me now, if you want,” he says. When Hermann remains rigid, Newt grins and slips one hand down to guide Hermann’s left hand to his right thigh, right where stocking meets soft, tattooed skin. Then he guides Hermann’s right hand to rest atop his left pectoral; with a white-hot jolt, Hermann realizes he can feel Newt’s nipple through the lace. “You wanna take this off me?” Newt breathes in his ear.

Hermann does. Hermann does very much. He would like to undress every inch of Newt, and he would like to take Newt to his bedroom, and he would like to see how far down those tattoos go. He reaches for the small metal clasp at the front of the bra. Someone wolf-whistles. Hermann freezes. 

He’s _engaged_ , for God’s sake. 

He drops his hand. “No,” he says, cheeks burning in humiliation. He’s hard in his trousers, he realizes. Newt hasn’t seemed to notice, not unless he’s merely trying to save face for Hermann. “Ah. I’m very sorry, Newt, but I—”

Newt shrugs. “It’s fine,” he says, and, with a wink—perhaps he _has_ noticed—unclasps the bra himself.

“Oh,” Hermann squeaks. The bra slips back, hanging uselessly at Newt’s sides, and Newt’s tattoos swirl down across his pectorals, around two perfect pink nipples Hermann wants nothing more than to take between his fingers and _pinch_. Newt grabs each end of the feather boa and pulls him forward, until Hermann’s face is nearly pressed to those pectorals. His fingers tighten impulsively on Newt’s thigh.

More jeers from Hermann’s colleagues. (Nearly unkind. They’re mocking him—he’s sure of it. They don’t like Hermann. They’ve never liked Hermann. They think Emmerich is going to waste his life on him.) “Tell me about your fiance,” Newt says, lovely eyes twinkling. “Would he be _jealous_ right now?”

Blushing is one thing. Becoming aroused is another. Crying is something else entirely—something _beyond_ mortifying. Hermann tears up anyway. “No,” he says.

Newt’s fixed flirty smile twitches, very slightly, downwards. Hermann’s vision blurs a little more. “Oh. Really?”

“He’s not very fond of me,” Hermann admits, and behind him, the jeers cease. “I’m not very fond of him. I never—well. My father arranged the match.”

Whispers. Newt is frowning fully now. “Oh,” he says. He brushes a few fingers through Hermann’s hair, soothingly, and wipes a tear from his cheek. “That sucks, dude. Hey. Will it cheer you up if I—” He wiggles his hips. Hermann does not wait to hear his offer before shaking his head.

“No,” he says. “I don’t think it will. I’m sorry.”

“One stocking?” Newt says.

Hermann shakes his head again.

“You wanna touch my tit?” Newt says, and waggles his eyebrows. “Or my ass?”

Hermann gives a watery laugh. “No. I’m sorry, Newt.”

“You’ve got _two hours_ with me,” Newt says. “You sure you don’t wanna touch my ass?”

Hermann inhales sharply. “Would you mind?” he says, after a moment.

Newt grins and drags Hermann’s hand under his labcoat to rest overtop his rear. It’s soft, Hermann notes dizzily. Soft as the rest of him. He places his other hand alongside it on his own accord and squeezes, very gently, as though it were a stress toy. Newt emits the smallest squeak Hermann’s ever heard. “You have nice hands, Dr. Gottlieb,” he says. “Your fiance doesn’t know what he’s missing.”

“What you said earlier,” Hermann says. “What did you mean, one of yours?”

“You want to talk about this _now_?” Newt snorts. “Okay. I meant one of my PhDs.”

“You’re—” Hermann startles so badly he nearly knocks Newt to the ground. “You’re an _actual_ doctor?”

“Biologist, in fact.” Newt snaps at the elastic of his goggles with a grin. “I actually took these right from my lab,” he says. “Labcoat too.”

“Is that—is that _sanitary_?”

“Probably not,” Newt says. “But it _does_ save money. _Oh._ Easy, tiger.”

Hermann had begun gripping his ass tightly, mostly out of surprise; he loosens his fingers guiltily. “I don’t mean to pry,” he says, because there _is_ something nagging at him, “but if you’re a biologist, then why are you…?”

“I like attention,” Newt says. “And, you know, easy way to raise funding on the side. I get a _lot_ for parties like this. Why are you getting married to someone just because your dad is telling you to?”

“It’s more complicated than that,” Hermann sighs. “My father—well—he’s my _boss_ , technically, and Emmerich is his business partner’s son, and—he’s quite wealthy.”

“So he’s whoring you out,” Newt says. “Seriously, you can touch my tit, if you want, you’ve been staring at it for twenty minutes. I’m not going to charge you extra.”

Hermann obliges gladly, though he does feel as if he ought to put up a token defense of his father. He is surrounded by his father’s employees, after all, who could very easily report back to him. He doesn’t. There are far more important things on his mind. “You’re very—soft,” he says. 

Newt snickers. “ _Soft_. Not sexy?”

“You’re that too,” Hermann says. He kneads at Newt’s pectoral, enjoying how the skin feels when he bunches it up, and especially enjoying the loud hiss of air between Newt’s lips when he rubs at a nipple with his thumb. “Tell me about your research.”

“Jellyfish,” Newt breathes. “I’m studying jellyfish right now. Was cutting one up an hour ago. Goddamn, doc, that feels good.”

“Call me Hermann,” Hermann says, and pinches Newt’s nipple fully. Newt’s mouth falls open.

“ _Ah_ ,” he says. “Nng. You. Uh. Astrophysics?”

“Astrophysics,” Hermann says. He trails his hand up to Newt's cheek and cups it; Newt takes the tip of Hermann's thumb between his lips and sucks on it, very gently. “Er. I would like to design space shuttles.”

Newt lets Hermann slip his hand away. “Sexy,” he says. “Does _Emmerich_ know about that?”

“He’s a nice young man,” Hermann protests weakly. “Our marriage will not be the end of the world. He’s—handsome.”

“And rich,” Newt points out. “Your dad must have _great_ judgement for you to jump into this thing like this for him.”

“Er,” Hermann says. 

Newt leans forward and nestles his chin into the crook of Hermann’s neck; his breath is hot on the shell of Hermann’s ear, the hard plastic of the goggles knocking against Hermann’s head. “You can take off my underwear, if you want. And the stockings.”

“Not the stockings, if you don’t mind,” Hermann says, a bit too fast (he likes the way the stockings squeeze Newt’s soft thighs and calves very much), and Newt lets out a burst of laughter.

“You’re such a gentleman,” Newt says. “Okay. Just underwear.”

He leaves a series of soft kisses up Hermann’s neck as Hermann uses the hand he’s still got clenched around Newt’s ass to untie the sides of his skimpy lace underwear and slowly work it down. He averts his eyes as Newt’s prick—flushed red, half-erect, and the perfect size, Hermann realizes, for Hermann to wrap up in his fingers—springs free. His coy smile has returned. “No one’s watching anymore,” he murmurs. “If you want, you can—”

“No,” Hermann stammers, but he does, he does _badly_ , and he finds himself dragging his fingers down towards Newt’s inner thigh anyway and settling centimeters away from that nice-looking prick. It gives a little jerk. So does Hermann’s. (He thinks he'd like to take Newt to his bedroom, right now, and do unspeakable things to him until he is a senseless heap on the mattress. He would like to watch Newt suck on more of his fingers. He would like to know what his pretty mouth looks like wrapped around certain other things, what kind of noises he'd make if Hermann _were_ to take his prick into his grasp.)

But guilt surges within Hermann’s chest again, and not merely because of Emmerich: surely Newt is only offering this because he feels he must, surely because he’s _paid_ to do this. He’s not actually attracted to Hermann. It’d be taking advantage of him.

Newt must see the hesitance in Hermann’s eyes, because he leans forward, very carefully, and presses a small kiss to Hermann’s lips. “It’s okay,” he says. (Perhaps he is being genuine.) “If it means anything, I think you deserve someone better.”

“Let’s leave,” Hermann blurts out. “Now.”

It’s not as if anyone will miss them. The party’s resumed while they were, er, talking, and Hermann’s fairly certain he hears one of his colleagues on the telephone requesting another stripper to make an appearance. They avoid Hermann’s eyes, at any rate. Likely out of embarrassment. Newt throws Hermann’s massive green parka on over his skimpy underthings at Hermann’s request (it’s freezing out, after all), balls up his stockings and labcoat to stick in the pockets, swaps out his goggles for his glasses, and laces up his muddy Doc Martens, and—after Hermann picks up a few things (wallet, phone, key, bottle of daily pain medication, in case—well—he’s not sure what)—they sneak out the front door.

Hardly anywhere reputable is still open this time of night, so Hermann buys them each a cheap cup of coffee from a convenience store, and they find a deserted bench in a deserted park to enjoy them on. Newt shivers for a good bit at first, quite bare-legged, but once Hermann (blushing) wraps an arm around his shoulders, he stops. They sit in comfortable silence.

“I don’t love Emmerich,” Hermann finally says. “He doesn’t love me, either. I don’t want to marry him.”

“There we go!” Newt says, and spills coffee on himself in excitement. “What else?”

“I don’t care about pleasing my father,” Hermann says. “I never have.”

“And?” Newt says.

“I think—” Hermann looks at the ground. His next thought is nothing new—nothing he hasn’t considered before he met Newt some hour and a half ago. He knows his abilities are being wasted in his father’s laboratories. He knows his work helps no one but his father—that he’s working towards no greater cause. “I think I would like to quit my job. I _know_ I’d like to quit my job.”

Newt is smiling, bright and broad. “Don’t you feel better now?”

“I do,” Hermann admits. The smile he gives Newt in return is genuine.

Newt takes a long sip of coffee. “You know,” he says. “Uh. I haven’t been completely honest with you. I _did_ know who you were.”

“What do you mean?”

“I knew you were Hermann Gottlieb,” Newt says. “I’m—I’m kind of a huge fan of your work. They said they needed someone for your bachelor party, and I had nothing going on tonight—”

Hermann’s brows furrow. “So you’re not a—a _dancer_ , so to—?”

“Ha, no,” Newt says. “No, I’m _definitely_ a stripper. But I also own every single piece of research you’ve ever published and I’ve kinda had a crush on you for ages and it doesn’t help that it turns out you’re stupidly cute?”

“Oh,” Hermann says. Newt is chewing on his bottom lip. The parka dwarfs him. Hermann would like to take him out to dinner, and then possibly continue what they’d started earlier tonight. Definitely continue. He’d also like to kiss Newt, perhaps in an entirely chaste context. “I would like to take you out to dinner,” Hermann declares.

Newt perks up. “Okay!”


	6. Blackout

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Shatterdome loses power, and Hermann decides to make a move.
> 
> Power Outage + Hand Jobs + Lack of Communication

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i often post my first drafts of these over on my side nsfw twitter @hermanngayszler, so find me there if youd like!
> 
> changed ending bc everyone was sad over the original LOL

Hermann’s first thought when the power goes out is to blame Newton. He knows it’s not entirely fair—that disasters happen for reasons that _don’t_ involve Newton Geiszler, and quite regularly, in fact, these days—but he’s so used to blaming Newton for every minor inconvenience that it’s difficult to fall out of the habit. Newton’s certainly caused power outages in the laboratory before. It’s not entirely off-base. This one appears to be Shatterdome-wide, at least, not that it helps: Hermann had been in his quarters, reading over old journals in bed, when he was suddenly plunged into darkness. A quick peek outside his door (likewise pitch black) confirmed that those overhead lights weren’t working, either, and a few more seconds of observation confirmed that the constant whirring of the massive air conditioning units had also stopped.

This was ten minutes ago. The lights have not yet come back on, nor has the air conditioning, and Hermann sits, alone, in his bedroom, no flashlights on hand, laptop computer on his desk in the laboratory, with absolutely nothing to do with himself but sulk and wait.

Mostly alone.

“ _Ground control to Major Hermann_ ,” Newton’s voice suddenly says, staticky and muffled, from Hermann’s top desk drawer. Hermann is bewildered for all of two minutes before he recalls the walkie-talkie Newton forced on him a year or so prior—for “emergencies”—that’s been sitting there charging there ever since. Hermann supposes this qualifies as an emergency. He fumbles his way across the room, fumbles the drawer open, and fumbles the walkie-talkie out. “ _Hermann, do you copy_?”

Hermann sighs and holds down the little call button. “Hello, Newton.”

“ _Holding out over there_?”

“It’s merely a blackout,” Hermann points out. “It’s nothing—”

The lights flicker overhead—on for a moment, then back out. They don’t flicker again. “ _Back-up generator must be busted_ ,” Newton says. “ _Hey, at least there’s no kaiju on the way. That’d suck_.”

“Mm,” Hermann says. “Yes. Well, if that’s all—” He makes to push down the antenna.

“ _Wait!”_ Newton says. Radio silence. Then, the small beep that means he’s holding the call button in again. Breathing. “ _Uh. You wanna come over_?”

Hermann grits his teeth. He taps his finger against the radio. “Newton—”

“ _I’m watching a movie on my laptop_ ,” Newton says, “and _I have a battery-operated fan._ ”

This gives Hermann pause. No power means no air conditioning, and Hermann’s quarters are stuffy enough while there _is_ power. It’s only going to get stuffier. Still—being stuck, alone, in a room with Newton, during the period of time which is supposed to be Hermann’s reprieve from being stuck alone in a room with Newton—but it _is_ hot, and it surely can’t take them that long to fix the power, not when so many crucial systems depend on it, and Newton’s quarters are a mere two minute walk down the hall. Forty minutes maximum alone with Newton. And his battery-operated fan. “ _I have ice cream that’s melting fast too, dude_.”

“Fine,” Hermann relents. “ _Only_ for an hour.”

Newton crows in delight. “ _Awesome! See you in a sec. Over and out_.”

“You came!” Newton exclaims, or at least, presumably it’s Newton, because Hermann is currently being blinded by whatever bright, shining monstrosity is strapped to Newton’s forehead and can’t quite see anything.

“Yes,” Hermann says, shielding his eyes. “Could you lower that, please?”

“Oh. Sorry.” The light flickers out. “Headlamp,” Newton explains. “C’mon.”

He takes Hermann’s hand and leads him into his quarters. It’s markedly better lit in here than in the hallway or Hermann’s bunk: headlamp aside, Newton has some sort of camping lantern set up on his desk, and, across the room, his laptop rests in the middle of his bed and lights the small radius around it up blue. Hermann can make out a soggy ice cream carton on his bedside table (one spoon placed next to it, the other shoved inside), a stack of DVDs next to that, a few piles of laundry on the floor.

He can also quite easily make out the fact that Newton is wearing nothing but boxers and an ill-fitting t-shirt. He stumbles to a halt.

“Sorry,” Newton repeats, evidently not realizing the actual cause of Hermann’s misstep. He winds his arm through Hermann’s and steers him a little more firmly. “I’ve, uh, been meaning to put that all in the hamper—here.”

He deposits Hermann onto the edge of the bed. A moment later, he’s sidling up against Hermann. His skin is so warm Hermann can feel it through his multiple layers—the skin of his bare arm, his bare leg.

Hermann stands back up. (Leaps to his feet in a panic.)

“If you don’t mind,” he stammers, “I’d, uh, prefer a chair.”

He can make out the confused twist of Newton’s mouth in the glow of the laptop. “The bed’s comfier,” Newton says. He holds out his hand in offering to Hermann. (Hell, does Hermann want to take it.) “Seriously, just—”

“No,” Hermann says, “no, ah, I’d prefer—” He swipes at thin air until his fingers brush the solid back of Newton’s desk chair. He drags it towards the bedside and collapses, heavily, in it. “—this. It’s plenty comfortable.”

Newton shrugs. “Whatever, man. Suit yourself.” He swings his legs up onto his mattress and settles in against his mountain of pillows. Hermann shifts against the stiff back of the chair. He was lying, of course, about it being comfortable; it’s the same standard PPDC-issue one he has in his quarters, the one that he never uses if he can help it for how sore it leaves his back. At least here he receives the full brunt of the fan Newton promised him.

“Okay,” Newton says, spooning a bit of dripping ice cream out of the carton, “we’ve got about three hours until my laptop dies, so pick a movie wisely.”

“Oh, I don’t care,” Hermann says. “You can decide.”

Newton swallows his ice cream suspiciously. “You sure?”

Hermann nods.

He regrets his leniency almost immediately. Newton selects something old and low-budget and gory, with special effects that make Hermann cringe and the most unnatural dialogue he’s ever heard. Newton seems to be enjoying himself, at least—laughing where Hermann’s cringing, quoting along to lines, instructing Hermann to pay attention to _good parts_ , cracking jokes every now and then (which do, Hermann admits, make him laugh). “This is fun,” Newton announces halfway through. “It’s like a sleepover party! Eat some ice cream already, dude, I can’t finish it all myself.”

Hermann obliges and spoons some out carefully. It’s mint chocolate chip. “I was never invited to sleepovers when I was a child,” he says. “I wouldn’t know what they’re like.”

“Neither was I,” Newton says. “I feel like we should be making friendship bracelets. Or playing spin the bottle.”

Hermann snorts, and scoops out more ice cream; Newton smiles.

Ten minutes pass.

“Do you mind if I take off my shirt?” Newton says. “It’s fucking hot in here.”

Hermann chokes on air. “N-no,” he says. “Go right ahead.”

Newton goes right ahead. Hermann fixes his eyes on the computer screen. “Take off your blazer,” Newton suddenly instructs. “And your sweater. You’ve gotta be _boiling_.”

Hermann is: he hadn’t really noticed until now, not with the fan blowing at him. The back of his neck is drenched with sweat. His hair is plastered to his forehead. His palms are slippery around one of the chair’s armrests and his cane, which he’s yet to relinquish his grip on. “I am,” he admits. Newton’s t-shirt hits the floor; Hermann’s blazer and sweater join it, and, after a few more seconds, both of his oxfords. Without the thick wool of his sweater to act as buffer, the desk chair suddenly feels twice as stiff and rigid. His back will hurt for sure by the time they’re through.

Newton notices his discomfort. “Dude, just get _up_ here already. I promise I don’t have cooties.”

“I couldn’t,” Hermann says, but Newton is already inching over and making space for him, and it seems _rude_ to not accept the offer.

He regrets it the moment he does: everything here is just so _Newton_. The bedspread (or what little of it he can make out in their limited light source) is dotted with small, multi-colored dinosaurs. The pillows smell of his hair product and deodorant. And there is Newton himself, of course, soft, messy-haired, nude but for his boxers and crooked glasses, arms and thighs flush together with Hermann’s. Radiating enough body heat that it feels like Hermann never took his blazer off in the first place. He’s started working on a bag of chips, and crumbs litter his bare chest (illuminated by the blue of his laptop).

Newton’s bare chest. “I’ve never noticed you had tattoos there before,” Hermann says, quietly, and Newton smiles, wipes his hands off on his boxers, licks salt off his pink lips.

“Yeah? You like ‘em?”

Hermann hums. It’s neither affirmative nor negative. Newton has more of those red-yellow waves at the crest of his collarbones, a stylized kaiju splashed across his strong pectorals, but Hermann finds it hard to pay attention to these—he is far more distracted by the pink buds of Newton’s nipples, the dusting of hair that turns thicker and darker the lower down Newton’s torso it creeps, until it disappears beneath the waistband of those boxers. Ill-fitting as his t-shirt had been, but in the opposite way. The shirt was too small, and stretched tight over Newton’s pectorals and abdomen; these are too-big, almost baggy, and have ridden almost all the way up Newton’s thighs.

Hermann is not surprised to find himself getting aroused. He _is_ surprised to find that Newton is still talking. “Ah,” Hermann says, tearing his eyes away from Newton’s boxers. (Hermann’s hands are folded in his lap, inches away from Newton’s thigh. How easy it would be, he thinks, to reach out and stroke the soft, freckled skin there, to drag his fingers higher and higher and slip them beneath the cotton of Newton’s undershorts and watch him twist and grunt. He wonders if Newton would let him. He wonders if Newton would touch him in return.) “I’m sorry, Newton, what did you—?”

Newton laughs. “I said it hurt like a bitch to get.”

“I’d imagine,” Hermann says.

Five more minutes pass. Newton stretches his arms above his head, rolling his shoulders, arching his back, grunting a little, and pushes his sweaty hair back from his face. The combination is oddly sensual. “‘S hot,” Newton says. He scratches his chest, right over his nipple.

“Yes,” Hermann agrees.

Hermann stares at the laptop screen.

He places his hand on Newton’s thigh.

Newton goes rigid; from the corner of his eye, Hermann can see his throat working furiously. Wordlessly. Like he’s forgotten how to speak. Hermann feels like he may have forgotten how to speak, too, forgotten everything that’s not Newton’s soft, warm skin. “Hermann?” Newton finally whispers into the dark.

Hermann stays very, very still, hand unmoving, waiting with bated breath for Newton to shove him off, to say _no_. To give any indication that he does not want this, that Hermann should pull away, play it off as an accident, or a joke, to pretend that he doesn’t harbor fantasies about Newton that are filthy enough to make Hermann himself blush. 

But Newton does nothing. He says nothing.

Hermann’s hand drifts higher.

“Hermann,” Newton breathes.

The laptop slips off Newton’s knees onto its side when he parts them and is quickly forgotten. Hermann watches, in lusty fascination, as Newton’s chest heaves, as the small hole at the front of his boxers begins to widen as he hardens. Newton is sensitive—this aroused by a single touch. Interesting. Hermann licks his lips and presses his palm to the front of Newton’s boxers instead. “Hermann—” Newton’s pink mouth drops open, the back of his head hits the wall. “Ngh—”

“Hush,” Hermann murmurs, brushing a kiss over the shell of Newton’s ear. He rubs at him gently—small, barely-there strokes—and feels him stiffen further, the slit of his boxers parting wider. The fabric is growing damp. (Not only sensitive—eager. Newton is always so eager. Hermann should not be surprised that it carries over here.) As an afterthought, Hermann drags the fingers of his other hand up and pinches Newton’s nipple. This time, Newton squirms.

“Oh, fuck,” he whines, “dude, what—?”

Hermann rubs at him harder, squeezes him once, then draws away—only for a moment—to admire his handiwork. Newton’s boxers are tented badly. The head of his prick peeks out from the now-gaping hole, red-flushed and leaking and inspiring a sort of fondness in Hermann, even, and when Hermann grazes a single finger over the slit Newton’s whole body goes taut. When Hermann does it again, Newton’s back arches as it had when he stretched. “ _Fuck_.”

Newton is panting. Hermann draws in a shaky breath of his own; his slacks have become uncomfortable. “Newton,” he says, quietly. “Will you…?” Unable to speak the request aloud, he slips his hand away from Newton’s prick and covers Newton’s hand—clenched, tightly, around his bedspread—instead. He draws it towards his chest.

It’s as if the dam of Newton’s need has finally burst open, as if he’s been waiting for permission all this while: he’s on Hermann in an instant, tearing at his clothing, kissing and biting at his mouth, rutting, desperately, against his thigh, gasping his name over and over. The buttons of Hermann’s shirt ping to the floor; Newton strokes his hands down Hermann’s newly-bared chest and kisses across his pectorals. “You’re so hot,” he moans into Hermann’s skin, “holy shit, dude—”

The laptop battery finally gives out, plunging their small corner of the room into complete darkness. Newton stills. Hermann presses the back of his head. “I’m here, Newton,” he says, softly.

He feels Newton wriggle back up his body, then he’s kissing Hermann, hot and messy, tongue pushing into his mouth insistently while his hands make fast work of Hermann’s belt buckle. His stubble burns Hermann’s skin. “Newton,” Hermann gasps when Newton gets his fingers ‘round him, “oh—”

“I’ve wanted,” Newton says in a harsh pant, “I’ve wanted—to—with you—” He presses his face into the crook of Hermann’s neck, the rest of his confession lost to a mumble, and tugs clumsily at Hermann’s prick.

It’s hot. It’s too hot. Newton is sweating, Hermann is sweating, Hermann is having trouble breathing. He shoves a shaky hand down past Newton’s waistband and wraps his fingers around him, too, matching Newton stroke-for-stroke, kissing at whatever bit of Newton’s skin he comes to contact with (cheek, mouth, jaw, neck), and Newton’s cries get sharper, shriller, more nonsensical. The bed creaks beneath them; Newton’s laptop falls to the carpeted floor with a loud thud. Anyone walking by would surely know what they’re up to.

“I’m gonna,” Newton grunts, “yeah, keep—I’m gonna—”

He shouts as he comes hot over Hermann’s hand, over the inside of his boxers, across his own skin, and his grip tightens so hard on Hermann’s prick that Hermann’s eyes sting with tears. “Newton, be—gentle, be—”

Newton’s strokes turn erratic, the kisses he’d been trailing across Hermann’s neck open-mouthed and biting. (Belatedly, Hermann realizes he should’ve warned Newton against leaving hickeys. They’re unprofessional.) Pressure builds, hot and churning, in the pit of Hermann’s stomach. He’s close, so close—

The power flickers back on. This time, it stays.

There is Newton above him, messy, red-faced, the front of his boxers soaked, his tongue sticking out between his teeth in concentration, illuminated fully by the yellow glow of the overhead light. He’s so beautiful it makes Hermann ache, as if something’s clenching around his heart, and his orgasm hits him before he realizes it.

It also makes him panic.

It was easy to initiate this with Newton in the dark, where he couldn’t see Newton’s face, where he could pretend—not that it _wasn’t_ Newton, but that it wasn’t entirely real. That it was a dream, maybe, something hidden, something just for them that meant nothing. Something they could easily deny ever happened the next morning. Now—in the light—with come and sweat cooling on their skin—purpling hickeys on Hermann’s neck—Hermann’s uncomfortable realization that he _would_ like it to mean something— “I’m sorry,” Hermann stammers, the moment he can form coherent speech. Newton has burrowed himself underneath Hermann’s arm and is lazily dragging his fingers across Hermann’s sparse chest hair. “I don’t know why—I didn’t—”

“Dude,” Newton says, blinking up at him, “don’t _apologize_ , are you kidding me?” He presses a small kiss to Hermann’s collarbone. “I’ve wanted to do that for fucking years. I had no idea you liked me too. I thought—” He smiles shyly. “I thought you hated me, and that I was an idiot for being _totally_ in love with you—” 

Hermann’s stomach churns for an entirely different reason. He pushes Newton away, not ungently, and drops unsteadily to the carpet. “I should go,” he says. “It’s late.”

Newton sits up, smile fading. His nudity had been erotic before, but now the sight of it—his soft prick, still poking through the small window of his boxers, the come beginning to flake off his abdomen, the garishly-colored kaiju snarling at Hermann from his chest—makes Hermann sick with guilt, and he forces his eyes away. He hadn’t known Newton felt that way for him. He’s not sure if he would’ve touched him if he did, not when his own feelings for the man are so confusing and muddled—it feels dishonest, somehow, like he's led Newton on. (Not just like: he has.) “You’re leaving?” Newton says. “You don’t wanna...cuddle?”

“It’s late,” Hermann repeats. He collects his cane. His shoes. His discarded blazer and sweater. His undershorts and slacks will need a thorough washing; there’s no use trying to salvage his ruined shirt.

“Oh,” Newton says. “Yeah. I guess.”

Hermann pulls his sweater on and doesn’t bother with the rest. “Thank you for your—hospitality,” he says. Newton’s cheeks color. “Er. I suppose I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” Newton says. Then, in a very small voice, “Please stay.”

Hermann chews at his lower lip. He pulls off his sweater.


	7. Stamina

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Newton: enthusiastic, eager, energetic.
> 
> First Time Topping + Multiple Orgasms + Newt's Stamina + Premature Ejaculation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter dedicated to erica for tweeting abt this the other day (eyes emoji)

“You’re positive you’d like to do it this way?” Hermann says.

“Of course,” Newton says. He slicks himself up with a handful of lubricant. “The other way is,” he grins, “fun, but we haven’t done this before, so—”

“I know,” Hermann says. He eyes up Newton’s cock with no small amount of trepidation. In Hermann’s most recent sexual encounters, most of which, if not all, starred Newton, Hermann has been on the _giving_ end of things. It’s been a while since he’s done—well. And Newton _is_ somewhat thicker than average, which means Hermann will be feeling every inch of it. He has cause to be a little nervous. “Would you like me on my stomach?”

“That’d be hot,” Newton groans. The hand he’s got around his cock tightens a little. “With your cute little ass up in the air…” Hermann watches precome bead at the tip of his cock, wet his thumb as he starts to tug at his foreskin. Then Newton shakes himself. “Uh. Is that comfortable? For your leg, I mean?”

“Perhaps not—up in the air,” Hermann admits, coloring a little. “But it is easier that way, yes.”

“That’s _really_ hot,” Newton says. “Fuck. Wow. Ha.” He bends down and kisses Hermann for a bit, sliding his hand up and down his jaw, pushing back his hair. His other hand works its way between Hermann’s legs to rub an interested finger over his hole. Hermann shivers; despite the lube, the touch is still quite dry, and nowhere near what would be comfortable going into him.

“Careful,” Hermann murmurs into Newton’s mouth.

“I’m very careful,” Newton murmurs back. He nibbles on Hermann’s bottom lip, thumb rubbing at the dip beneath it above his chin in rhythm with the one between Hermann’s legs. “You wanna suck my fingers for me, baby? Get me all wet?”

Not wet enough for what he clearly intends to do afterwards. (Since when has Newton called him _baby_? He says the oddest sorts of things when he’s overwhelmed with lust; last time, when he’d ridden Hermann in his desk chair, he’d called Hermann a stud muffin and exclaimed that he wanted to have hundreds of babies with him.) “Er,” Hermann says. 

Already distracted, Newton rubs his fingertip at his small pucker again. Hermann squirms this time. “Hot,” Newton repeats, with a dreamy sigh. “You feel really tight. Kinda wanna just—” The wet drag of his cockhead over Hermann’s bare calf, his bare knee, Newton’s tongue darting out across his lip. 

“Absolutely not,” Hermann gasps.

“Chill,” Newton says. “I know, I know. Just saying. You feel tight.” He withdraws his finger and pats Hermann’s thigh. He presses a kiss to Hermann’s jaw. “Okay, stud, on your tummy. I’m gonna replace that stick up your ass with something much more fun.”

Hermann rolls his eyes, but obliges.

Newton squirts more lubricant on his fingers and works Hermann open quickly and efficiently, clearly practiced after so many years of doing it to himself, and—after Hermann politely declines Newton’s offer to use his tongue on him for a bit, too much too soon, he thinks—Newton begins to nudge his cock against him. “Fuck,” Newton groans. He presses his forehead to Hermann’s back. “I don’t know if I’m gonna last, dude.”

“You’re not even _in_ yet.”

“I already know you’re gonna feel fucking great,” Newton says. He sucks in several deep, even breaths, ghosting hot air down Hermann’s spine, and presses his left hand to the back of Hermann’s (which is clenching the sheets). “Okay. Okay. Get ready. Get—uh—”

Hermann takes all of Newton’s cockhead without difficulty, but when Newton tries to push more in, he stiffens on reflex. “Relax,” Newton says in his ear. “You’re too tense.” He flicks his tongue over the shell of Hermann’s ear.

Newton's one to talk. “You’re squeezing my hand,” Hermann wheezes out.

“Am I?” Newton says. He is: so tight that Hermann’s eyes are beginning to water. Newton eases his grip. “Sorry. I’m a little nervous. Okay—” He slips his hand down to find Hermann’s hip instead, where he pets and rubs soothingly. “Relax,” he repeats.

Newton’s ministrations are comforting, even more so when he begins to plant kisses down Hermann’s neck, and Hermann finds the tension leaving his spine, his body relaxing as Newton ordered and going pliant as he sinks into the mattress. Newton shifts his weight to his knees, and reaches up to card his hand (the one previously clutching Hermann’s on the bedspread) through Hermann’s hair. “Better?” he says.

“Mm,” Hermann says. Newton kisses his shoulder. “Much better.”

Newton pushes in another inch; another; another. Soon he’s bottoming out with a grunt. “Oh, fuck,” he whines, and Hermann winces—it’d been right next to his ear—and clenches down around him, “that’s _good_ , that’s—”

“Move a little,” Hermann gasps.

“Uh-huh,” Newton says.

Newton does not seem to understand there is a grey area between staying absolutely still and jackhammering into him for all he’s worth, a fine line between the latter and _move a little_. Newton moves, and he moves hard, and he moves fast: the hand in Hermann’s hair flies back to brace on the mattress, the fingers around Hermann’s hip tighten and angle him up, and Newton, grunting, fucks into him again and again, pelvis smacking Hermann’s rear, soft stomach smacking Hermann’s back.

“This is awesome,” Newton shouts. The bed creaks, and Hermann worries it might break. “You’re awesome, Hermann.”

It does feel nice. Hermann opens his mouth to voice this, egg Newton on a little, perhaps, but before he can, Newton is suddenly tensing; a moment later, he orgasms.

“ _Already_?” Hermann says, scrunching his face up at the sensation. He usually rides out his own inside of Newton, too, without a problem, but the reverse feels so dirty and _crass_. (It’s no surprise why Newton loves it.)

Newton slumps over him. “Sorry,” he mumbles against Hermann’s shoulder. “I’m all wound up. And you’re fucking tight, dude. Don’t you use dildos or anything? I can recommend a few. Hell, you can borrow mine.”

“How I masturbate— _if_ I masturbate—is none of your concern,” Hermann snaps. “Besides, that’s not how it works. I wouldn’t become magically less—”

“You totally would,” Newton says. “You’d get used to it, and you wouldn’t be so goddamn tense when we do this.”

“Stop calling me tense,” Hermann says, scowling into his pillow and leveling a failed, pitiful kick at Newton’s calf. He knows it’s true, but he doesn’t particularly want Newton Geiszler—the reason for half of his daily anxiety and tenseness in the first place—reminding him of it.

“Fine, fine,” Newton says. He takes in a few deep, shuddering breaths. His sweaty forehead presses to Hermann’s back. “Gimme a second.”

“What—?”

“It doesn’t take me too long to get it, uh, ready and,” Newton begins to rock his hips, soft, spent cock sliding easily through his release, “uh, rarin’ to go again. Fuck. This feels hot.”

Impossibly, after a few minutes of gentle rocking, Newton begins to harden again. Hermann knows Newton has a high libido, an insatiable sexual appetite (often, Hermann must finger him for hours before he’s content to be fucked by Hermann’s cock, and even after then Newton begs for a second round with one of his sex toys), enough energy to power the entire Shatterdome, but he hadn’t anticipated— “Is this normal for you?” Hermann chokes out as Newton begins to pound into him with increasing speed. He’s twice as frantic this round, twice as graceless, twice as filthy. Hermann can feel Newton’s release spilling out around his cock each time he rocks back in all the way.

“Only when I’m with someone as sexy as you,” Newton says, and gives a strained laugh. 

“Funny,” Hermann says.

“Mm. Not a joke, baby.” Newton hoists Hermann’s hips up higher and rubs a hand over his waist. “You’re the hottest guy in the entire world. Can I turn you over? I wanna kiss.”

Hermann hums his consent. Newton does not merely turn him over, but pulls him up and into his lap, arms wrapping fast around him (one tightening around his rear, the other around his waist), cock sliding back into him with as much ease as before. He latches onto Hermann’s neck, sucking a hickey, then slides up to kiss and nip at his mouth. Hermann rakes a line down Newton’s back with his nails and moans. “Newton…”

“ _Yeah_ ,” Newton says, his eyes screwing up behind his glasses. “Guh, Hermann—”

He bounces Hermann up and down a few times, squeaking and whimpering like _he’s_ the one being fucked, and then—finally— “Oh, right there,” Hermann pants, wriggling his hand between their sweaty bodies and grasping and tugging at himself, “yes, yes—”

Hermann orgasms, tightening so hard around Newton he cries out in Hermann’s ear; Hermann’s so hazy and blissed-out he scarcely even notices Newton push him back onto the bed and finish off in him for a second time. He _does_ notice Newton sag against him like a tattooed sack of potatoes. He also notices that Newton is still attempting to rock into him, still attempting to mouth kisses over his skin.

“Surely you can’t mean to go _again_ ,” Hermann pants.

“Ten minutes,” Newton mumbles. “I could. Do you want?”

Hermann considers it. “Lunch first.”


	8. Reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hermann is in the mood for some petty revenge. Newt humors him.
> 
> Family Reunions + Post-Movie: Pacific Rim (2013) + Hermann's Rebellious Teenage Years + Sex On Someone Else's Bed + Coitus Interruptus 
> 
> Porny sequel to that "Newt and Hermann go to a Gottlieb family reunion" fic I posted back in June, found [on AO3 in my drabble collection here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15158402/chapters/47070610) and [on tumblr here](https://hermannsthumb.tumblr.com/post/185797628313/for-the-summer-prompts-if-you-want-you-could-do)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for this!

After the supremely awkward evening they spent dodging questions (well-meaning and otherwise) from the extended Gottlieb family, and the equally supremely awkward dinner spent in utter silence (broken only when one of Hermann’s aunts sneezed really funny and Newt burst into uncontrollable giggles), and the supremely _uncomfortable_ night they spent crammed into Hermann’s twin bed which creaked every time they so much as shifted, Newt’s nearly over the fucking moon the next morning when he finds out the next day of events takes place entirely at the farm next over. More extended Gottlieb family property, apparently. And this one really is a farm. Hermann admits it.

Newt’s excited for one reason in particular: they’re not invited.

Hermann, on the other hand, is fairly miffed about it.

“You never liked Aunt Ida anyway, Hermann,” Bastien reminds him, over a mildly less awkward breakfast spent on the back patio. (She may be terrifying, and look at Newt like he’s a speck of gum on the bottom of her pristine black heels, but goddamn, Hermann’s mother can _cook_.) “She was always snapping at you to stop slouching.”

“None of us liked her,” Hermann reminds him in return. “I was the only one she didn’t like in return.” He tears his buttered roll in half and mumbles, under his breath, “I couldn’t exactly _stop_ bloody slouching, could I?”

“She really said Hermann can’t come?” Newt says. It just seems...a little extreme, is all.

Bastien clears his throat. He cuts off a small piece of his hard-boiled egg, as if to stall. “I’m sure Hermann has disclosed to you he’s not exactly on, ah, _good terms_ with many of our relatives. Or perhaps you have figured it out on your own at this point.”

“Uh,” Newt says, thinking of the coldness they’d been met with from anyone who wasn’t Bastien or Karla, the photograph of punky, smoking twenty-something Hermann, the boy with the freckles and the sparrow tattoo who was Hermann’s first kiss. “Both.”

“I caused a bit of a _scene_ during her sixty-fifth birthday luncheon and she never forgave me for it,” Hermann says, bitterly, tearing the roll into smaller pieces. He throws one of them off the porch to a duck who’s wandered up from the pond to poke around in the grass. It quacks at him. “Bigoted old bat. She was just waiting for an excuse to hate me.”

“A _scene_.” Bastien snorts. At the curious look Newt shoots him, he adds, “He called Father a fascist pig and told Aunt Ida to stuff her cranberry-orange scones—”

“Newton gets the picture,” Hermann interrupts quickly. He scowls at his brother, who hides his smirk in his cup of coffee. “It wasn’t as if she didn’t deserve it.”

“It wasn’t,” Bastien agrees. 

“Just wondering,” Newt says as they sit alone in the kitchen later, grinning from ear to ear, “is there _anyone_ in your extended family who doesn’t hate your guts?”

“Newton,” Hermann sighs.

“Not a judgement,” Newt says. He snags Hermann’s wrist and reels him closer, knocking their foreheads together. Hermann’s breath smells like coffee and fruit pastries. “Honestly, I think it’s badass. If we went to school together I probably would’ve been head over fucking heels for you. Mr. Newton Gottlieb written all over my notebooks. I could’ve asked you to senior prom, and you would’ve said no, but I would’ve played the guitar outside your window and…”

Hermann grants him the ghost of a smile, and a small kiss to the corner of his mouth. “I would never have said no to you,” he says, sliding his hand up to cup Newt’s cheek. “You were—what did Karla say—my _type_ , after all.”

“You softie,” Newt coos. “I’ll buy you a corsage when we get home.” Privately, he can’t help but wonder if that was _most_ of the reason Hermann wrote to Newt in the first place—that Newt was the sort of loud-mouth in a leather jacket who’d kiss Hermann hard and make his father’s blood boil, and the expertise in k-science was just a bonus. It makes Newt feel—well— _sexy_. Rebellious.

He grips Hermann by the front of his moth-eaten wool sweater and tugs him in for another kiss, longer this time, dirtier, pulling Hermann into his lap. (The sort of kiss he’d give Hermann after picking him up on his motorcycle, he decides.) And another. And another. Then Hermann starts to get grabby. “Come upstairs,” he breathes into Newt’s mouth, one hand slowly working under the waistband of Newt’s jeans. Newt parts his legs instinctively. “We have the house to ourselves. We can do whatever we’d like.”

“Uh-huh,” Newt gasps.

Hermann leads him up the rickety stairs and down the long hallway to his childhood bedroom, where he pushes Newt onto the small bed and shuts and locks the door. Newt immediately shucks off his jeans. “Allow me an, ah, moment,” Hermann says, hand clenched on the head of his cane, eyes roving greedily over Newt’s bare legs and the obvious bulge in his lime green briefs. (Newt immediately begins to rub at himself with a grin: Hermann loves when he puts on a show.) “I’ve got a few—a few spare pillows, in the closet.”

At home, they have a mountain of pillows Hermann can squirm around on without straining his leg to his heart’s content. “Mmhmm,” Newt says. He slides his hand under his t-shirt to pinch at one of his nipples, exaggerating his pleasure with a throaty moan; Hermann wets his lips. “Hurry up before I get started without you.”

“Wretched man,” Hermann says breathlessly. He clacks furiously over to the closet door and flings it open.

That’s when Newt freezes.

The other side of the door is absolutely _plastered_ with posters, and not the tasteful scientific and pretentious foreign cinema ones tacked up neatly throughout the rest of Hermann’s bedroom. There’s a soaking wet Keanu Reeves in a white t-shirt. Keanu Reeves looking sensitive with River Phoenix for (in German) _My Own Private Idaho_. Another two of Leonardo DiCaprio—one of him in _Titanic_ , also looking sensitive, one of him in _Romeo + Juliet_ , Hawaiian shirt hanging half-off, gun and cigarette in hand. A host of other various hunks Newt remembers gracing the covers of neon-colored tween magazines up and down the grocery store checkout lanes of his childhood, clearly cut out from similar magazines and plastered together in a haphazard collage. Bill Nye.

“I fucking knew you didn’t make me watch John Wick for the plot,” Newt says.

“What?” Hermann says. He turns and catches sight of the door. His face drains of color. “Oh, _bugger_. I’d forgotten about that.”

“It’s so _cute_ ,” Newt says. And it really is: he knew Hermann’s childhood love of BBC miniseries helped him learn English in the first place, so he always pictured him crushing on Colin Firth or someone else appropriately _posh_ , but that mental image is swiftly being replaced with Hermann cramming _Titanic_ into the VCR for the fifteenth time to daydream about taking Kate Winslet’s place. “I had one of David Duchovny on the inside of mine,” he adds, and wolf-whistles. “Yowza. What a hunk.”

Hermann wrinkles his nose. “If you say so.”

Newt laughs. “Now get _over_ here already,” he says. “And close that. I don’t really want Keanu judging my performance.”

Hermann arranges his collection of mis-matched pillows while Newt—realizing he forgot to do it earlier, and knowing they’llbe needing them—digs around in his carry-on suitcase for the bottle of lubricant and box of condoms they bought at the airport, of all places. Hermann’s stripped down to his own briefs and splayed himself across the pillows by the time Newt emerges. “Certainly took you long enough,” Hermann hums. Newt falls between his legs and presses a kiss to his knee. “My whole bloody family is home at this point.”

“Mm. Don’t care,” Newt says. He kisses his way up Hermann’s briefs and past them to his stomach. “‘S hotter that way.” 

He kisses up higher, lingering over Hermann’s left nipple to suck and bite at it, and Hermann’s long fingers thread through his hair. “Newton. _Ah_.”

Newt drags his mouth across to the right one and flicks the tip of his tongue over it, pinching the left one between two fingers instead. He wishes he still wore the tongue piercing he got in his early twenties—he’s sure it would _really_ drive Hermann nuts. Hermann’s sensitive enough here already. “How d’you want it?” Newt murmurs. “Want me to ride you or fuck you?”

“Fuck me,” Hermann says, as breathless as he’d been in the kitchen, and Newt shivers—he fucking _loves_ when Hermann swears. Hermann tugs on his hair. “Wait. Wait—kiss me, first.”

Newt indulges him enthusiastically. He’s a bad boy, he tells himself, seduced by Hermann as petty revenge against his strait-laced and overbearing parents, but he’s going to show Hermann the time of his life and Hermann will fall in love with him without meaning to, and then he’s going to take him out on his motorcycle—

There’s a photograph of a seven or eight year old Hermann on Hermann’s nightstand, dressed in high-waisted shorts and knee highs, looking somber as hell, and holding an extremely detailed model of a spacecraft. There’s a ribbon pinned to his vest— _1st Place_. Probably for some sort of science fair. Young Hermann’s eyes are boring directly into Newt. It’s creepy.

It’s not exactly setting the mood.

“Okay, time out,” Newt says, pulling away from Hermann with a gasp. “I need to—” He reaches out and flips the photograph down; behind it is one of an even younger Hermann in a navy blue peacoat, standing ramrod straight next to a sophisticated-looking calico cat. There’s a photobooth strip tucked into the frame: teenage Hermann, with his earring and severe undercut, getting cozy with someone who can only be his freckled first kiss. Hermann has started biting at Newt’s throat. “Time out,” Newt repeats, a little shriller, and slaps around to hide that one too.

“What in the _blazes_ are you doing?” Hermann finally snaps, but it’s drowned out by the loud music that suddenly blares from his ancient CD player alarm clock; in Newt’s blind desperation to knock the photographs out of sight, he accidentally switched it on.

It’s The Smiths. _The Queen is Dead._

“Really, dude?” Newt says.

Teeth gritted, Hermann slams the CD player’s off button. He tries to get back to biting Newt’s throat and squeezing his dick, but—between everything, from the childhood photographs, to the dozens of pairs of eyes across the room in Hermann’s closet, to the rocketship bedspread, to goddamn Morrissey—Newt’s _really_ not feeling it anymore. “Dude,” he finally sighs, gazing down at poor, horny Hermann, _his_ poor, horny Hermann, “I’m sorry, but your bedroom is a total boner killer.”

“Then just look at me,” Hermann says. He presses his hand to the back of Newt’s neck and nudges him down, just a little bit, enough to nip teasingly at his bottom lip. His other hand palms at Newt’s dick through his briefs. “Pay attention to _me,_ darling.” It works, at least for a minute: Newt takes in Hermann’s dark eyelashes, his blown pupils, the pink flush grazing his cheekbones, his wide, swollen mouth, and he thinks _goddamn, I’m a lucky bastard,_ and _I’m going to rough that mouth up even more,_ and even _I want to jizz on those cheekbones_ , and he gets it back up a little, and then he remembers Keanu Reeves in Hermann’s closet and the photographs lying in a heap on the floor and—

“Nope,” Newt sighs. “Sorry, babe.”

“You _cannot_ be serious,” Hermann says.

“ _The boy with the thorn in his side_ ,” Newt sings. “Behind the—”

Hermann clamps a hand down over Newt’s mouth. There’s a funny expression on his face: not disappointment, not annoyance, but the kind of light behind his eyes and the kind of strange smile he’d get when he had a breakthrough. “Newton,” he declares, “I have a _marvelous_ idea.”

“Isn’t there somewhere else?” Newt says. “A guest room? Maybe a very comfortable couch? This just seems—”

“What?” Hermann says. He didn’t bother to redress himself at all beyond briefs before he dragged Newt from his bedroom, nor did he allow Newt to even toss on his damn t-shirt, and normally Newt would find that kind of boldness an _incredible_ turn-on, but now it just makes him jumpy. On edge. He’s peeking down every single hallway and around every single corner to make sure one of Hermann’s eighty-year-old aunties isn’t going to, like, pop out of the shadows somewhere and see Newt’s dick outline.

“It just seems weird, Hermann,” he admits. “I don’t know, dude. It’s just super weird. Anyway, what if they walk in on us?”

“You said it yourself,” Hermann says. He pushes Newt against the wall—nearly knocking down a boring painting of a field—and kisses him hard, nipping at his lower lip again, rolling his hips into his. “Mm. It’s ‘ _hotter_ ’ this way.”

“Guh,” Newt says.

Hermann’s parents’ bed is three times the size of Hermann’s—“So Mother and Father didn’t have to touch while they slept,” Hermann explains, which is just a whole new can of worms Newt’s not going to touch—and doesn’t creak as ominously when Hermann drags him down onto it, which is an improvement, but there are about eighty percent more photographs of Hermann’s father scowling like he just ate five whole lemons, which is, by far, much, much worse. It also smells like dead roses. “How is this meant to be any less of a boner killer?” Newt says.

“Because they’d _loathe_ me for this,” Hermann says. He sucks on Newt’s earlobe and wraps his good leg around Newt’s waist, urging their bodies flush together. “Father, at least. He loathes me, he loathes you—”

“Jeez, thanks.”

“—he loathes the fact his bloody wall didn’t work, and that I was _right_ , and that we—”

“I get it,” Newt says, gently, because Hermann was starting to flush angrily, his voice rising higher and shaking. Newt doesn’t get it, really, he never could, but his mom gave him his own fair share of issues that coordinate pretty well with Hermann’s, so it's something. “Hey, look, revenge sex. That’s hot. I’m into that.”

Hermann takes a deep breath. “Very good,” he says.

“I love you,” Newt reminds him, because it seems like he needs to hear it. 

The corners of Hermann’s eyes crinkle. “I love you, too, Newt,” he says.

As a general rule, Hermann only ever uses Newt’s nickname under very specific circumstances: when he wants Newt’s attention right away, when he is in the throes of passion, and when he is being very, very serious. Newt’s response is usually the same each time: he gets very, very horny. Nothing changes now.

He steals a kiss and drag his hands up Hermann’s chest slowly. One thing Newt’s always found supremely sexy about Hermann is how supremely _understated_ his sexy is. He hides his sturdy arms and toned pecs and slender supermodel legs beneath layers and layers of ugly baggy sweaters and tweeds, just waiting to be unveiled and kissed and fussed over by Newt and Newt alone. Newt fucking loves it. “Tell me again what you wanted?” he says. “I can’t remember. Must’ve forgotten.” He tweaks a nipple. Hermann’s mouth drops open.

“Ah. I want—” Newt tweaks the other. Hermann squirms, hands flying up to clench in Newt’s hair again. “ _Ah_. Newt. I want you to fuck me.”

“Say it again,” Newt sighs.

Hermann tugs hard on Newt’s hair. “ _Fuck_ me,” he orders, stern and demanding and _hot_.

Newt loves kissing over Hermann’s pecs and supermodel legs, and he loves when Hermann swears, and he loves when Hermann bosses him around. “Yes, sir,” he says happily.

He flips Hermann over and works him open fast—Hermann’s always impatient when Newt tops—and slips into him even faster, grunting and biting his tongue and screwing his eyes up while Hermann clenches, vice-like, around him. He’s too-hot even through the condom. “Ease up a little, babe,” Newt gasps against the nape of his neck. “You’re—”

“Go,” Hermann says. He swats Newt’s arm. “ _Go_ , Newton. Fuck me. You’re taking too long.”

“Easy for you to say, asshole,” Newt says, “I’m the one doing all the work here.”

Hermann squeezes him so tight Newt’s eyes start to water. He grits his teeth.

“ _Fine_ ,” he says. “Goddamn primadonna.”

He gives it to Hermann hard; he gives it to him fast; he gives it to him refusing to look anywhere near Hermann’s parents’ wedding photo sitting to the left of them on the dresser. He focuses on Hermann instead (remarkably _easier_ to do here), the way his strong back shifts and arches, the sweat that plasters his hair to his head, the beautiful little sounds he makes every time Newt plunges back into him. “This is so weird,” Newt pants in Hermann’s ear. “Does it make it weirder that I’m kinda into that?” Like giving the finger to the man. Fuck you, I’m fucking your son and I’m great at it and he _loves_ it.

Hermann grunts something intelligible.

Newt continues to fuck him. He remembers his earlier fantasy: he’s the bad boy Hermann brought home to piss off his family, and Hermann’s going to fall in love with him, and they’re going to ride around on his motorcycle. Newt had a motorcycle once, actually, purchased as a birthday gift for himself on his eighteenth birthday (alongside his first non-stick and poke tat), and it’s been gathering dust in a small storage unit since 2020. He and Hermann _could_ right around on it together. “Actually,” he admits, “this is kinda sexy.”

“I should hope so,” Hermann says. “I would be very put out otherwise.”

New wheezes out a laugh. “Not the sex,” he says. “I mean, yes the sex, but— _Where_ we’re having it.” He slips a hand down to settle on Hermann’s bony little ass, which he pinches lovingly. “You’re a dirty old man. How long have you wanted to do this?”

“Don’t be so _crass_ ,” Hermann says. “It wasn’t—it was spur of the moment.” Newt rubs the head of his dick deep inside Hermann; Hermann keens, his entire body going taut and rigid. “Ah. _Ah_.”

“No way,” Newt says. He dips his hand lower to stroke over Hermann’s thigh, then swipes his tongue over the shell of his ear. “This was totally planned. You invited me to this stupid reunion in the first place to jump my bones.”

“Do we have to talk about this now?” Hermann says, with some effort.

“Nah,” Newt says. He’d rather not, actually. He shifts up higher on his knees. “I’m gonna go a little faster.”

He does, and he slips his hand around to rub at Hermann’s dick in rhythm with the roll of his hips, until Hermann is squirming and getting vocal just the way Newt likes. Well, vocal for Hermann. He has no problem raising his voice at Newt when Newt’s done something _bad_ , but the instant Newt is working overtime to please him— “Yes,” Hermann groans into the pillow, “oh, yes, Newton—”

“Louder,” Newt grunts. “C’mon. Tell me I’m good, baby.” Calling Hermann _baby_ is the sort of thing Newt can only get away with when they’re doing something like this. Hermann’s too distracted to get pissy about it. ( _I am a grown man_ , he always tells Newt, _not an infant_ , and Newt usually responds by calling him _old chap_ for the rest of the day.) The coil in his gut tightens, and a familiar hot-cool shiver runs down his spine. “ _Fuck._ I think I’m gonna come soon.”

Hermann turns his face to the side with a gasp, and Newt gets another glimpse of that gorgeous face—those eyes, those eyelashes, those cheekbones—before his glasses finally lose the battle with the end of his nose and slip off to who-knows-where and everything becomes a blur. He bites down on Hermann’s shoulder. “I wish you hadn’t worn the rubber,” Hermann says, in a strange, choked-off voice. “You ought to have—”

“Dude,” Newt says. “You are _nasty_. Of course I wore—”

He doesn’t get to finish. Hermann’s whole body jerks, and he gasps again, louder than before, and says, also very loudly, “Oh, _bugger_. Newton—!”

“Mm, yeah.” Newt rubs his thumb over Hermann’s slit and licks over the fresh red bitemarks on his shoulder. “You gonna come too, baby? You gonna—”

“ _No_ ,” Hermann says. He swears in German, and not in a sexy way, either, but the way Newt’s come to associate with major fuck-ups in the lab. Newt’s hand stills. “We left the bloody _door_ open, Newton. My brother—”

“Fuck,” Newt says. He scrambles off of Hermann and to search for his glasses. “Fuck, fuck.”

They get dressed in a hurry. It’s easy to do it in a hurry, because the most either of them have is their underwear. “Dressing gowns,” Hermann hisses, wobbling as he pulls up said underwear with one hand and clings to Newt’s arm with the other. “There are dressing gowns in their wardrobe.” When Newt doesn’t move, Hermann swats at his thigh. Newt yelps. “ _Get_ them, you—”

“Fine, fine,” Newt says. For someone who was so eager to do this here in the first place, Hermann is acting awfully embarrassed at being caught.

They remove and discreetly bury the condom at the bottom of the master bath trash can—only after Hermann talks Newt out of flushing it, which, Newt will admit, _was_ a bad idea—and re-fluff the pillows. Newt dons Hermann’s mother’s dressing gown, which is made of a fraying floral silk, and Hermann’s dons his father’s, a dark cotton. Neither of them fit. Newt doesn’t even think they would if they swapped. “Now,” Hermann says, “we must simply act _very naturally_.”

Newt’s boner has yet to flag, and it’s standing—proudly—at attention, very, very obviously through the thin robe. Adrenaline, he thinks. Or maybe it’s just a result of Hermann’s dainty ankles on full display. The guy sends Newt into Victorian hysterics on the regular. “Naturally,” Newt agrees.

The lone Gottlieb sibling Newt has not made acquaintance with, the eldest of them, is standing ramrod-straight at the end of the hallway, back turned deliberately towards them. He’s taller than Bastien and Hermann. His hair is curlier. He has those same adorable ears, though, the tips of which are now very pink. “Hermann,” he greets, at the creak of his parents’ door shutting. He doesn’t turn around. “I was sent by Mother to inform you the celebration will be extending later than expected and you should not wait to eat supper.”

“Dietrich,” Hermann greets in return, bizarrely, even comically calm. Nothing out of the ordinary here. “Ah. Thank you. Have you met Newton?”

“No,” Dietrich says.

“Howdy,” Newt says. He ties his silky belt a little tighter. “Uh. I'm Newton. Call me Newt. Cool to meet you.”

“Newton is...” Hermann says. “We… He’s…”

He doesn’t finish. Newt decides they really _do_ need to have a talk about labels before the week is out; _partner_ is a little too convenient for people who'd like to pretend they're just colleagues, no homo, man, whereas _boyfriend_ just doesn't nearly grasp the magnitude of their decade of simultaneous mutual pining and loathing and the fact they shared a brainfor a few minutes not that long ago. “I’m his Newton,” Newt offers.

“Ah,” Dietrich says.

They stand in uncomfortable silence. Dietrich still doesn’t turn around.

“I ought to be leaving,” Dietrich finally says. “I wouldn’t want to miss dessert. Aunt Ida’s made scones. Cranberry-orange.”

Newt perks up. “Oh, the infamous cranberry-orange scones,” he says, and Hermann takes great care to smack his shin with the end of his cane. “ _Ow_.”

“Of course,” Hermann says. “I will see you tomorrow, at breakfast.” Then, as if he can’t help himself, bursts out (to Newt's mild horror) “I really don’t care if you tell Father where you walked in on Newton and me doing that. _Just_ so you’re aware.” His voice gets louder. “Or if you tell Mother. Or the entire bloody party.”

“Goodnight, Hermann,” Dietrich says, and speedwalks like a bat out of hell down the hallway.

Newt waits until they hear the front door swing shut to reach, tentatively, for Hermann’s ass, and, tentatively, give it a little squeeze. “I’m still good to go,” he says. “But maybe, like, somewhere else.”

“Oh, alright,” Hermann says. “We'll use the guest room.”


	9. Virtuoso

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beach Sex + Guitars + Post-Movie + Oral Sex
> 
> Newton and Hermann stumble upon a beach bonfire; Hermann stumbles upon a new kink.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GOD it's been taking me so long to write shit lately! this is mostly to get myself back into the swing of it. enjoy the porn!

“It’s nice out here, isn’t it?” Newton says. “Nice, and quiet, and peaceful.”

Hermann zips his parka up higher and huffs. He can see his breath. “Bloody _cold_ , is what it is,” he says. “My fingers are _numb_. I don’t know how you can stand it.”

A trip to the seaside, Newton said, is what they needed, after the whole business of the world not ending, and their brains being scrambled up with an alien hivemind, and being—for all intents and purposes— _unemployed_ for the near future. Just the two of them. Together. He’d found them a neat little one-floor cottage for rent off the coast of Massachusetts (where they’d already _be_ , happy coincidence, for a rather nice event hosted by Newton’s alma mater), inexpensive enough to afford on what's left of their paltry salaries, and it took very little goading for Hermann to give in. The sea has always been good for his joints. The new guarantee of no kaiju crashing such a vacation—wrong side of the world aside—made the whole idea only more attractive.

Newton neglected to account for the cold, rainy spell that would seize the last few weeks of April and leave them shivering by the cottage’s gas-lit fireplace most nights rather than—as he’d promised Hermann— _lounging with margaritas on the sand in shorts and watching the sunset._

“Just trying to lighten things up,” Newton says. 

He’s in a sweater that’s too big on him; the sleeves hang down low enough to cover his hands to the knuckles. Hermann can’t help but feel _annoyingly_ endeared at the sight. A thrift shop find, he thinks. Or perhaps something lifted from his own closet too many years ago to count. “You’re failing miserably,” Hermann says.

They grew tired of shivering by the gas-lit fireplace fast, and—after several unsuccessful attempts to coerce Hermann into doing everything from 1500-piece jigsaw puzzles to watching _Forensic Files_ re-runs—Newton finally had better luck with the suggestion of a moonlit walk. The ocean would be calm; the sky would be clear; they could bundle up in their coats and bring cardboard cups of hot coffee. 

Newton prepared the coffee. He’s put far too much sugar in Hermann’s, and far too little milk. Hermann wishes he’d agreed to the jigsaw puzzle. “We ought to have gone somewhere _warm_ ,” Hermann says, peering gloomily at the moon’s reflection on the black ocean. “California—Greece—bloody _Bermuda_. We went there on holiday when I was twelve. It was warm.” Hermann received such a bad sunburn he spent the second half of the trip groaning under his sheets with Aloe smeared across every exposed expanse of skin. It was one of the better Gottlieb family outings. “Very warm.”

“Greece?” Newton says.

“Bermuda,” Hermann says. “Don’t you listen?”

“Greece could be cool,” Newton says. “I like Mediterranean food. And I bet I’d look hot in a toga.”

“Romans wore togas. Not Greeks.” Hermann frowns. “At least I don’t think.”

“What did Greeks wear, then?” Newton says. “They wore something like that. Like—fucking bedsheets.” A gust of wind blows cold sea air towards them, and they shiver, almost in unison. Maybe it is in unison. They do a lot of things in unison these days. “Okay, shit, it _is_ pretty cold. Maybe you have a point.”

“I always do,” Hermann says. He takes a sip of his fast-cooling coffee, and pretends he doesn’t mind getting a mouthful of sugar sludge. “Have you had your fill of our scenic walk? You can pick whatever you'd like on the television.”

Newton's turn to huff. “Yeah, fine,” he says. “Maybe I can poke around and see if I can get the heat to work. I bet if I...”

And then he suddenly stumbles to a halt.

“Hey, what’s that?”

Hermann isn’t sure what he means until he points far off down the beach in front of them. Even then, it takes him a few minutes of squinting to see it too: the flickering of a small fire. A bonfire, he thinks, right on the shoreline. “No,” Hermann says, knowing instinctively what Newton will do next. “No, Newton, please, I’m tired.” For good measure, he lies, “And my leg is getting _terribly_ sore.”

“Five minutes,” Newton says. “Just enough to see what it’s about.”

“And starved,” Hermann says. “Tired, and starved. _Please_ , we can order out anything you’d like. Mediterranean! I’m sure there’s one of those sorts of places nearby.” Their rental came with a kitchen drawer stocked full of takeaway brochures and phone numbers galore— _one_ of them is sure to be able to suit Newton’s fancy.

Newton is uninterested in testing Hermann’s hypothesis. “They probably have food at the bonfire!” he says. He grabs hold of one of the sleeves of Hermann’s parka and gives a tug. “Come on, come on—please, Hermann, it’ll be _fun_. Just like we’re back in college on spring break or something.”

“Our university experiences must’ve been very different,” Hermann says.

“Well,” Newton says, “ _I_ never actually went to any bonfires, but it seems like the kind of thing I should have done. Like in the beginning of Jaws. Remember the bonfire in Jaws?”

“No.”

“It was the sort of cool teenage experience I was expecting. Minus the sharks. Hey, look, we’re here!”

In the midst of their bickering, Newton— _expert_ of distraction—has somehow managed to lead him the entire length of the way to the beach bonfire, which is populated by what appears to be a far-too-hip collection of twentysomethings. Early thirtysomethings clinging to their twenties, maybe, if Hermann were to be less generous: plenty of rope bracelets, dyed hair, piercings, oversized sweaters. Newton fits right in.

“Hi!” he says brightly. A couple of the bonfire-goers turn from their conversations to give them polite, if not surprised, smiles. Hermann's found that people have become a lot friendlier these days. Mass elation over the Earth's continued existence, perhaps. “I’m Newt. My friend and I are staying down that way. Mind if we crash?”

“Sure,” a young man says. He hops to his feet—after rummaging around in a small cooler—to hand Newton a bottle of beer. He pops the cap off for him. “Does your friend want one too?”

“Nah,” Newton says. “Hermann’s a beer snob. Luckily, I’m not. Thanks, dude!”

Hermann watches him down half the bottle without so much as pausing for breath; someone sitting below him offers him a bag of chips, which he waves away in favor of chugging the second half. Hermann does similarly when it’s offered to him next. Taking food means they’re obliged to stay and talk longer, and Hermann—quite frankly—wants this to be _over_.

“So,” Newton says. He sprawls out on the sand, dragging Hermann down with him before Hermann even has time to realize he’s got a fist clenched in his coat. Hermann nearly lands in his lap. “What’s the occasion? Birthday?” Newton's arm finds its way around Hermann's shoulders.

“World not ending,” the young man who gave Newton the beer laughs. “This is the first time we’ve been to the beach in years.”

Hermann wonders vaguely if any of the group recognize them beyond _Newt_ _and his friend_ _Hermann_ , if the three months they spent popping up in the odd magazine and newspaper alongside heavily-redacted details about their work have a lasting impact beyond getting them discounts at their favorite Hong Kong dumpling stand and the occasional piece of fanmail from teenage STEM enthusiasts. If they do, they’re not showing it. Hermann can’t decide whether or not he’s offended. “Newton,” he says.

“Same for me and Hermann,” Newton says. He retracts his arm only briefly to shove an elbow into Hermann’s ribcage in a manner which Hermann can tell was meant to be affectionate. Not that it feels very affectionate. “We haven’t had a vacation in a _decade_. Finally I just said, look, dude, we deserve to—oh shit, is that a guitar?”

He’s watching a young woman across the fire unsnap the buckles of a guitar case and retrieve the instrument in question. It’s plastered with a mix-matched collage of stickers, much like Newton's own guitar gathering dust in his Hong Kong quarters. The woman nods. “Yeah,” she says. “Do you play?”

“He does, unfortunately,” Hermann says, having listened to more of the _trash_ Newton’s old band put out than anyone should’ve in a single lifetime. Newton is a talented musician, and though Hermann has come to feel nothing but reluctant affection for his _unique_ voice, he is still severely lacking as a vocalist.

This gets a few unintentional laughs. “Aw, he’s just jealous,” Newton snorts. He takes the guitar and grazes his fingertips over its strings, likely testing its need to be tuned, before settling into the proper position to play. “Okay—my old band was, like, eighty percent cover songs, so that’s all I really know how to do. Sorry in advance.”

Newton proceeds to play no less than four separate Weezer songs back-to-back. He's good, of course he’s good, scratchy, out-of-tune vocals aside, but that’s not why Hermann finds himself unable to tear his eyes away. Why he watches Newton—his strong, careful fingers, his skilled, careful strumming, his eyes clenched tight in concentration—as if transfixed. Not as if. He _is_ transfixed.

It’s the first time he’s seen Newton play outside of grainy old videos (Newton, hair gelled into spikes, ears pierced all the way up, swimming in leather and black eyeliner, gyrating his hips _obscenely_ ), and, by God, it’s doing _something_ to Hermann. He wants Newton to run those steady fingers all over his body, to push them _into_ his body—he wants Newton to fix him with that steady, unnerving gaze of concentration—to pull sounds from him just as effortlessly—

He waits until Newton—breathing hard, and flushed in the face—relaxes and lowers the guitar to touch his arm. Newton turns.

“May I speak to you in private?” Hermann murmurs in his ear. 

It’s their secret, albeit simple, code, one Hermann hasn’t called upon in what feels like a lifetime. One that Newton will understand at once. Hermann is not disappointed: Newton startles, turns to him with wide eyes, and practically tosses the guitar back to its owner. “Uh,” he says. “Yes. Sorry guys, I gotta, uh, go.”

The reason for their code was this. Being two men in their relative prime, who shared a living space and a preference for same-gender romantic and sexual relations, and with _very_ little time for dating, it seemed only natural that Hermann and Newton relieve their neglected libidos with each other. Not only natural; it was logical, too. Logical and scientific. When Hermann felt the urge, or when Newton felt the urge, they’d turn to the other and repeat their code, and then they would reconvene to one of their bunks, where things would progress. It made for a marvelous end to arguments.

Hermann put a stop to it, of course, when things between them became...uncomfortably murky. Or perhaps Newton was the one who put a stop to it. It stopped, is all that matters. Colleagues ought not to be spooning and _kissing_ for reasons which aren’t prelude to something else.

They walk quickly back down the beach. Newton looks at him now with those wide, wide eyes, which flicker between Hermann’s fingers (clenched in the lapels of his leather jacket, cane forgotten below on the sand—when did Hermann do that?), Hermann’s parted, panting mouth, the lopsided tilt of Hermann’s stance which means his trousers have suddenly become uncomfortable as anything. “I thought,” he stammers, “you said we were done with...this?”

“Forget what I _said_ ,” Hermann says, “and put your bloody _mouth_ on me.”

Newton is good at following orders when he wants to. He surges forward, teeth knocking against Hermann’s hard enough to make them both shudder, and begins attacking his lips with a series of messy, uncoordinated kisses. Hermann responds in kind. “Why,” Newton pants, as Hermann latches onto his throat, “why now?”

“On the ground,” Hermann says. He sucks at Newton's jaw, slides his hands under Newton's thick sweater. (He didn't realize how much he missed doing this sort of thing with Newton.)

“But it’s all...sandy,” Newton says.

“Do you want me to suck you off or not?” Hermann snaps, and Newton squeaks and stumbles backwards onto his arse. 

“I do,” Newton says, legs falling open in the blink of an eye, “holy fuck, I do, I just—why?”

Hermann gets down to his knees with a low groan. Newton is elevated above him, having chosen to sprawl himself across a dune, which will work to Hermann’s advantage—he won’t have to loll about in the sand and make a mess of himself. Only kneel. “Get those damned things open,” Hermann says, smacking lightly at the zipper of Newton’s absurd skinny jeans.

Newton does, though it takes him several tries—his hands are shaking. “So you won’t tell me?” he says.

Hermann tugs the elastic waistband of Newton’s undergarments down over his prick, which begins to redden and stiffen at once. Good. “Tell you what?” Hermann says. “That—for some _unearthly_ reason—the sight of you playing that guitar—” He wraps his fingers around Newton’s prick and jerks it out, fully, from its confines. “—sent me spiraling into a fit of lust?”

“Nnh,” Newton whines.

“That I had to drag you away when I did to avoid making an embarrassment of myself in front of your fascinating new friends?” Hermann says. With his other hand, he works open his button and fly and, breath hissing between his teeth, brings himself to full hardness with a few light strokes.

“Emb—embarrassment?” Newton echoes.

Continuing to stroke himself, Hermann swallows down a decent amount of Newton’s prick in one go; he only means to tease, though, and so pulls off quickly. Newton writhes and whines on the sand. “Would you have preferred I jumped you there?” Hermann says. He enjoys how rough his voice sounds—he knows that sort of thing tends to affect Newton. 

Newton licks his lips. “Maybe,” he says. 

Hermann considers it: Newton’s nimble fingers working over the guitar strings as Hermann tucks his head into his lap and works _him_ over, swallowing him down again and again. He groans aloud at the fantasy, unable to help himself. “ _Je_ sus,” Newton says. “You’re really into this, huh?” He grins down at Hermann, and a moment later, Hermann feels those lovely fingers sliding through his hair. “You’re into how much of a _rockstar_ I am.”

“ _Hardly_ ,” Hermann says. Then, he confesses, “It’s entirely in your fingers.”

“Nah, you wanna be my groupie so bad,” Newton says. “You wanna— _nnh_!”

Hermann swallows him back down, far enough that he nearly gags. Newton tugs sharply on his hair. “I missed doing this with you,” he whines. “Shit, Hermann, that’s awesome, that’s—” Another tug. “Hermann, wait, Hermann—”

Hermann pulls off with a sigh. Above him, Newton is panting. “What is it now?”

“I think I’m gonna come,” Newton says.

“It’s been five minutes!”

“Yeah, well, _sorry_ , I’m a little out of practice!” Newton snaps. “I haven’t gotten laid in weeks. Months. Just—keep, uh—” He nudges Hermann’s head back down, until his lips brush the flushed head of his prick. “C’mon, dude.”

Hermann rolls his eyes, but he takes Newton into his mouth again. Truthfully, Hermann _loves_ sucking Newton off. It always makes him feel so delightfully flthy, from the wanton way Newton moans, to his tendency to fuck Hermann’s face when he gets excited, to how heavy and hard he feels on Hermann’s tongue. Newton doesn't disappoint him now. “That’s _awesome_ ,” he moans, rolling his hips, pulling Hermann's hair, and then, “oh, fuck, okay, here, I’m gonna, I'm gonna do it now—”

His orgasm is loud and sudden, and Hermann winces as it goes down his throat. Newton slumps against the sand like he’s just run a marathon. “Five out of five,” Newton says breathlessly. “ _Shit_. You're way too good at that.”

Hermann retrieves a handkerchief from the pocket of his parka and wipes off his mouth. The sex, at least, has warmed him up, though his knees are uncomfortably damp from the sand. “We ought to go home,” he says. “It’s terribly late.”

“You don’t want me to do…?” Newton gestures to the front of Hermann's trousers.

“When we get home,” Hermann says. He _fully_ intends to take Newton up on the offer then. “I don’t fancy getting sand anywhere it shouldn’t be.”

“Yeah," Newton agrees with a wince, reaching around to pull up his jeans, “pretty sure it's a little too late for me.”


	10. Wibbly-Wobbly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Newt and Hermann jump back in time to settle a petty disagreement. Their past selves are more than welcoming.
> 
> Tags: Foursome - M/M/M/M + Time Travel +Bickering + Old Married Couple + Anal Sex + Dirty Talk + Finger Sucking + Switching + 30something newt/50 something hermann + 30something hermann/50 something newt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TECHNICALLY it's not switching, idk how else to put "newt and hermann bottom at the same time" in a tag?
> 
> thank u ksci_janitor for throwing around horny ideas with me in discord, how else would "newt makes viagra and hermann is worried theyll have heart attacks" snowball into "Time Travel Foursome"?

“You know,” Hermann declares, to no one in particular, “I really feel as if I’m growing desensitized to this sort of nonsense.”

 _Nonsense_ , in the broad sense, applies to a great many facets of Hermann’s life as of late—giant aliens tearing their way out of the ocean, sharing a laboratory with the most obnoxious man in existence, working with so little funding Hermann can scarcely afford _pencils_ , Newton setting things on fire or blowing up microwaves or melting beakers every other bloody day—though Hermann’s never felt a situation more deserving of the descriptor than the one at hand now. Why shouldn’t a hole in the universe suddenly rip itself into existence in the middle of the laboratory? And why shouldn’t another set of Newton-and-Hermann, older and obviously cross, pop out of it? And why shouldn’t they demand—well—?

“Hermann,” the other Newton says, or _pants_ , really, like he’s just run here (or like he’s just had a terrific row with his Hermann, which seems far more likely), “we need to have sex _right now_.”

Of course. That would be why.

“We didn’t just do this on a whim, you know,” the other Hermann says. The _future_ Hermann, it turns out, from nearly twenty years from now. The future Hermann who is married to the future Newton. If nothing else, Hermann thinks, he and Newton survive the war unscathed, though apparently they both go mad enough at some point to _willingly_ cohabitate for the rest of their lives.

“ _I_ had very good reasons,” future Newton grunts. “You wanna know the amount of, of shit he has me doing? I went _vegan_. I cut out _caffeine_. I go for _jogs_ , and take _yoga classes_ , and bought a _health cookbook,_ all—fuck—all so Dr. _won’t throw out his fucking cigarettes_ here can get screwed exactly how he orders, _whenever_ he—”

“ _Entirely_ false,” future Hermann spits. “The yoga was your bloody idea. Couple’s bonding, you said.” He snorts. “You just wanted an excuse to prance around in those little _shorts_ to _embarrass_ me in front of a hoard of—oh—of bored mothers—”

“Not embarrass,” Newton says. “Seduce. Not my fault you can’t keep your hands to yourself, baby.”

“I can’t,” Hermann breathes. “You know I can’t.” He looks over Newton hungrily. “Oh, Newt—”

They begin to kiss. Very messily, in fact. It makes Hermann wrinkle his nose as much as it makes his heart thud and arousal, thick and heady, pool deep in the pit of his stomach. He wonders when it is he suddenly becomes so—er— _lax_ with public displays of affection. 

“Uh,” Newton, this timeline’s Newton, squeaks, very much still impaled on future Hermann’s prick and all but forgotten. Well. Forgotten by their future selves, perhaps, but certainly not by Hermann. Hermann can’t look in even the vague direction of where their bodies are joined for too long without his mouth going dry as a desert—to think that _one day_ that’ll be as natural to him at the public affection… “What were you guys fighting about, exactly?”

Future Newton pulls away: a strand of saliva follows. “Well,” he says, “you know, _obviously_ Hermann and I aren’t exactly young and spry anymore, so I thought, hey, what if I whipped us up a little something to—” He points both of his index fingers at the wall, then slowly lifts them up towards the ceiling with a short whistle. “—y’know, keep us horny.”

“He brewed sex pollen in our kitchen sink with illegally acquired—and quite old, mind you—kaiju glands,” Future Hermann says, “and I _very reasonably_ pointed out our hearts might quite literally give out if we attempted to use something like that at our age.”

“…Yeah, well, _Hermann_ wouldn’t test it out with me,” Future Newton says, “and then—well, I was _joking_ about going back in time and screwing a version of him who wasn’t a total square bitch, and then he got all pissy, and said _he'd_ screw a version of me who wasn't an idiot, except that'd be impossible, and then I was like, well, what if I actually do it? And, well…” He coughs. “Now we’re here.”

“You wouldn’t test out the sex pollen?” Newton says.

“You _bent the laws of time-space_ ,” Hermann says, “out of _spite_?”

“Of course I wasn’t going to test out the bloody _sex pollen_! Are you out of your mind?” Future Hermann says, at the same time Future Newton says, “Ha, yeah, I did.”

“Unbelievable,” Newton and Hermann say in unison.

A goofy-looking smile spreads across Future Newton’s face as he glances between them. “Aw, Hermann, we were so cute,” he says.

Then, without warning, he thrusts roughly back into Hermann.

Hermann yelps in surprise. “ _Oh_!”

The build-up of it all had been maddening: a scramble to find enough lubricant to suit their needs (finally produced from Newton’s bedside drawer), a brief but impassioned argument over whose bed they would be using (Hermann volunteered his own after reminding the group he was granted a double by HR, and had a nice and soft mattress), then came the _preparation_ , the older Newton’s fingers pressing and prodding within him, stretching him out slowly with his prick— And oh, it feels so _good_ , how have he and Newton not been doing this for years and years?

The older Newton pulls out and thrusts back in once more, and this time, Hermann moans and pushes down to meet him. He seems to get a kick out of this. “Yeah, you don’t even _need_ sex pollen, Hermann, do you?” he snickers. “You’re enough of a—” He wraps his fingers around Hermann’s right ankle, jerks his leg up as high as he can, and begins to pump in and out of him, “ah, _slut_ already.”

“Don’t call me that!” Future Hermann snaps, but, quite unfortunately, that’s the moment future Newton chooses to cram his fingers into Hermann’s mouth, and Hermann chooses to let out a deep, wanton moan around them.

“But you are,” Future Newton says, mock-earnest. He nods at Newton. “I tell you what, dude, you better get ready now, because this guy is _insatiable_. It’s sex all the time. All he wants—”

“Newton!”

“All he wants is a dick up that tiny lil’ ass of his,” Future Newton says, working his hips faster, and Hermann whimpers as he yanks away the fingers in his mouth. “Or—nh—or me in his lap. Am I right, Hermann? You having fun down there?”

Oh, hell, it’s all too much for Hermann—and it doesn’t help that Newton ages into what is _exactly_ Hermann’s bloody type, all grey hair, and bushy beard, and soft sides and stomach, and _God_ , pierced ears—his hands fly out, practically on their own accord, and grip the man’s shoulders to pull him down into a messy kiss. “Harder, Newton,” he begs, as Newton bites his lower lip,“ _ah_ , a little—”

Future Newton’s laughter rings in his ears and vibrates against his mouth. He can hear himself—his _future_ self—sputtering indignantly. “Have _some_ self-respect,” he chides. “He’ll never let me live this down.”

“Holy shit, Hermann,” Newton, Hermann’s Newton, says, “can you stop arguing with them for ten minutes and fuck me already? I’m dying here.”

“Oh, yes—I’m very sorry.”

Soon the sounds of Newton and the other Hermann’s pleasure fill the room: Newton’s high, needy whines, the other Hermann’s guttural grunts, the slap of skin-on-skin. With a great deal of effort, Hermann turns to find Newton angled towards him and drooling onto his sheets mere inches away from his face. Future Hermann, it seems, has decided to roll him on his side for the act. Easier for his leg, Hermann reckons. He must’ve perfected the routine with his own Newton. “Enjoying yourself?” Hermann says, breathily, and a touch sarcastically.

Newton’s eyes flutter open. “You have a really awesome dick,” he whimpers. He whimpers a little louder, and Hermann spies one slender hand inching across his colorful chest to pinch at his nipple. “Oh, _fuck_. Yeah, keep doing that.”

The other Hermann begins to kiss up his neck: Hermann watches, mesmerized, unable to decide whether to track the pretty pink blush that colors Newton’s cheeks, or the tremble of Newton’s soft thighs as the other Hermann rocks into him again and again and again. “You’ve always been so terribly sensitive,” the other Hermann coos in Newton’s ear, which he then proceeds to bite. Newton’s whole body gives a jerk. His hard prick smears precome on the sheets. “Sweet, and sensitive. _Mm_.”

“Do it again,” Newton says, “oh, shit—”

The older Hermann does, now timing his hips so each plunge is met with a sharp bite to Newton’s skin and an even sharper pinch of his nipple. “You little tart,” he says, happily, as Newton writhes and whimpers and shoves his arse backwards.

“I am a tart,” older Newton says, just as happily. He leans down and presses a small kiss to Hermann’s throat, and when he speaks again, it’s in a low murmur that makes _Hermann_ squirm this time. “Nice view, huh?”

Hermann blushes furiously. “I’m sorry,” he says, forcing his eyes away from the moaning, needy Newton to the grinning, _distinguished_ Newton looming above him. “I didn’t mean—you’re very nice to look at too. I like—” He stammers out the next bit. “Er—the beard. It’s…good, on you.”

Another kiss to his throat. This time, that Newton nuzzles against him, that marvelous beard catching and dragging across his skin. “Yeah, Hermann loves it,” he says. “He likes it when I put him on his stomach and—”

The other Hermann clears his throat.

“Sorry, babe,” the other Newton says, but he lowers his voice and speaks the next bit directly into Hermann’s ear. “He likes when I rub it all over his thighs. Goes fucking nuts for it. You should’ve seen the burn it left behind on our tenth anniversary, _whew_. That was hot.”

“I’d imagine,” Hermann croaks out. “Please, Newton, a little—” Harder? Faster? “More,” he finally decides on.

Encouraged, and evidently an attentive lover (who would’ve guessed?) the future Newton seems as if to double his efforts. He snaps his hips into Hermann with abandon; he nips at his throat, his neck, swallowing down any moans he produces with messy kisses; he shoves his fingers back into Hermann’s mouth, thrusting them in and out in time with his prick, hissing _yes_ and _yeah, perfect_ under his breath every time Hermann sucks in a way that pleases him; he runs his other hand up and down Hermann’s body, touching, squeezing, pinching in all the right spots. It’s as if he knows every little thing that makes Hermann tick. And—Hermann realizes, with another jolt—he probably _does_. He and Hermann’s future self have had years upon years to get to know each other. “Nng,” future Newton groans, clenching his eyes shut, his voice getting higher, “oh, fuck, dude, okay, I think I’m—”

His hips stutter. Still working his tongue over the older Newton’s fingers, Hermann turns his head to the side to gaze at his Newton again; Newton’s mouth is hanging open, and tears are gathering at the corners of his eyes. “This is so awesome,” he says, half-slur, half-squeak. “Wow.”

Not quite believing his own courage, Hermann reaches a shaking hand down to curl around Newton’s prick, and, slowly, clumsily, begins to stroke him off. Newton appears as if to go bug-eyed. “ _Hermann_!” he wails out, and then—without warning, with one particularly well-timed bite to his shoulder from the older Hermann—he comes over Hermann’s hand.

Things progress quite quickly after this. The older Hermann fucks Newton through his orgasm, then, dragging the older Newton into a prolonged kiss, continues fucking Newton through an orgasm of his _own_ ; the older Newton comes in Hermann almost the instant his lips touch his Hermann’s; Newton, sweet, overeager Newton, so desperate to return Hermann’s favor, brings Hermann off with a rather erratic handjob as the other Newton moans and thrusts and finally stills above Hermann.

They manage to all fit in the bed afterwards. Somehow.

“How’s your leg?” future Newton calls over to future Hermann. His eyes are too-soft, too-gentle, and Hermann averts his gaze quickly, feeling oddly as if he’s intruding on something private. “You need your meds, honey?”

“Mm, not yet,” future Hermann says. He stretches out both of his legs, then stretches his arms over his head. One of those arms then wraps around Newton’s shoulders, who makes a sound like a pleased cat and cuddles up against him. (So, Hermann thinks, Newton in bed is eager to be fucked, an attentive lover, _and_ a cuddler—Hermann doesn’t think he could ask for more.) “I’ll imagine I’ll make it until we get home.”

Newton blinks at Hermann. “Uh,” he says. “Do you…?”

“No,” Hermann says. “But. Er. Thank you.”

Newton nods. He looks embarrassed.

They lay in silence for some time. Finally Newton is the one to break it.

“If that’s you _without_ kaiju Viagra…” he says.


	11. Piercing (Pt. 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A security checkpoint at a conference brings some interesting information to light about Newton.
> 
> Genital Piercing + Nipple Piercings + Nipple Play + Hand Jobs + Rivals With Benefits

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok the results google yielded for the plausibility of this scenario were disappointing so pretend it's a really powerful metal detector they're using :/ also I KNOW I already wrote dick piercing newt porn but its fun

There are exactly two things Hermann hates as much as mandatory work conferences (barring, of course, the kaiju): one, long queues, and two, prolonged exposure to Newton Geiszler. Hermann’s current state of existence features a lethal combination of all three, so he’s of the opinion his temperament—which may be described, if one was being kind, as _foul_ , and involves much more consideration of homicide than average—is more than justified.

“Fuck _me_ , this line is long,” Newton says, unhelpfully. He stretches up on the tips of his steel-toed boots to peer overtop the countless heads in front of them. It’ll be at least another twenty minutes before they make it through security. “Huh, maybe we shouldn’t have gotten breakfast after all.”

Hermann cannot fathom the point of these conferences or why the Marshal insists on sending them out to them month after month. The exchange of fresh ideas is important, he understands, as is putting faces to the hard-working kaiju science division of Hong Kong to the public, but so is all the _bloody_ research he could be seeing to back on base instead. It’s preposterous. Absolutely preposterous. He’s long since held a sneaking suspicion the Marshal does it for the sheer _amusement_ factor, or—more likely—as punishment for the, er, amount of HR complaints Newt and Hermann tend to submit about each other. These "trips" always do seem to crop up after they’ve had a nasty round of them. “If we hadn’t gotten breakfast,” Hermann says, through gritted teeth, “you would be whining like a damned _child_ about how hungry you are right now. Just like you whined this morning when _I_ said we should just pick up a bloody _bagel_ on the way. Now look at us.”

Newton, as Hermann ought to have expected, insisted they take full advantage of the complimentary breakfast buffet in their hotel lobby and delayed them by nearly forty-five minutes. “They had a waffle maker,” Newton mumbles.

The line begins to move. _Finally._ Hermann raps the end of his cane neatly against Newton’s ankles when Newton doesn't move with it “Walk, you wretched man. We haven’t all day.”

They reach the security checkpoint after what feels like a century; their ID badges are checked, and they’re directed to deposit their hotel room keys, mobile phones, and wallets into a small plastic bin. Hermann passes through the metal detector without a problem.

Newton does not. Predictably: nothing ever runs smoothly when Newton is involved.

“I swear,” he says, frozen halfway in and shouting to be heard over the shrill, rapid beeping, “I don’t know _why_ it’s doing this.”

Newton is ushered backwards; his pockets examined; his sides patted down. All fruitlessly. People in line behind them begin tittering angrily. “Look,” Newton continues, “I think it must just be—”

A security guard begins to sweep a smaller metal detector over Newton’s body, and before it can so much as progress further than his chest, it begins beeping. It’s swept back up: more beeping, localized approximately at his pectorals. Oh, God. “ _Oh_ ,” Newton says. He grins sheepishly. The security guard arches an eyebrow. “Whoops. Piercings, sorry, I, uh, forgot.” The smaller metal detector continues downward, and Newton tracks it nervously. “That’s, that’s a pretty sensitive little—"

This alone would’ve been enough cause for Hermann to turn his eyes to the ceiling and beg for an extremely localized kaiju event at that very instant, except the mortifying ordeal does not stop there. The metal detector pauses over the front of Newton’s trousers next and continues to beep.

Newton stares down at himself. “…Forgot I was wearing that one too?”

They _finally_ send Newton on his way with some snickers. Hermann cannot meet any of them in the eyes, though—as he grips Newton by the elbow and jerks him along—he does give them a short, terse “I apologize for my lab partner.”

He waits until they’re in a relatively secluded section of the lobby to round on Newton. Carefree, _unashamed_ Newton. “What the _hell_ is wrong with you?” he hisses. “We’re at a bloody _conference_! Not—not some—sex club!”

“ _Sex club_?” Newton says, too loudly, and bursts out laughing. Hermann scowls. “Dude, relax, they’re just piercings.”

“But why are you wearing them _here_ of all places?”

Newton shrugs. “I always do, especially when we have to give presentations,” he says. “It’s a confidence thing. Makes me feel cooler than everyone in the room.” He leers at Hermann. “And sexier.”

Hermann—decidedly—does not find himself blushing, but if he did, it would be from the sheer impropriety of such a confession and from _nothing_ else. Certainly not because his mind is wandering places it shouldn’t be. Certainly not because Newton’s jeans are so _absurdly_ tight that, if Hermann tried, and perhaps squinted a little— “I find that very hard to believe,” he finally says.

Newton sticks his thumbs in the pockets of those _absurd_ jeans and continues to leer. “Geeky guys think it’s a _huge_ turn-on,” he says. “It’s like they can sense it. Remember two years ago, when I got back late from the biology discussion?” Hermann gives a hesitant nod. “I was getting _laid_ , dude.”

“Ah,” Hermann says.

“In a closet,” Newton says.

“Yes, thank you,” Hermann says.

Newton makes a loose fist with his hand, raises it to his mouth, and puffs out one cheek in helpful demonstration. He waggles his eyebrows. “ _Thank you_ , Newton,” Hermann says.

Snickering, Newton drops his hand. “C’mon, we’ll be late for the panel.”

Hermann and Newton do make it to the panel in time, though it’s not as if it makes much of a difference to Hermann. The instant he sits down, he finds himself hopelessly distracted: fidgeting in the stiff-backed folding chair, drumming his fingers on his knee, aware, vaguely, of someone droning on and on onstage, and even more vaguely of Newton’s occasional whispered attempts in engage him in conversation (isn’t this boring, what’s that dude's deal, how long until lunch?). He’s hot under his collar. Is the air conditioning broken? Two seats ahead, someone won’t stop coughing.

Hermann can’t stop thinking about Newton’s piercings.

Newton is wearing his customary white work button-up, with a coffee stain on its pocket and a blue kaiju blood stain on its left cuff. It’s pulled tight at his pectorals and abdomen. Slightly too-large at the shoulders. If Hermann concentrates, he imagines, he might see the miniscule protrusion of something metal overtop where his nipples would be. “He worked with us in Vladivostok,” Newton whispers in his ear. His breath is warm, and it tickles Hermann’s skin. “Remember?”

“Mm,” Hermann says. What do they look like, he wonders? They must be of no inconsequential size to set off an alarm. Big, flashy—it wouldn’t surprise Hermann, really, not with the rest of the body modifications Newton’s taking a shining to. Maybe they’re shaped like kaiju heads. Maybe he plays with them while he gets off—or maybe it's _to_ get off.

“He was an asshole,” Newton says, and Hermann says nothing. Evidently unimpressed with this lack of attention on him, Newton touches Hermann’s knee and leans in closer, so close Hermann can practically feel his lips on the shell of his ear. “Remember that one time—“

Without meaning to, Hermann glances down. There are no unseemly piercing-shaped bulges in Newton’s trousers, tight as they are, and tighter still Newton's splayed legs make them, so perhaps the one down _there_ is something more modest. What would it feel like, if Hermann…? “Yes,” Hermann breathes in response to some question Newton’s posed, and Newton’s laugh vibrates against his neck. Oh, by Jove—why must Newton be so damnably _tactile_? Always touching Hermann—grabbing Hermann—putting his arm around Hermann’s _waist_ —the man has never heard of personal space.

“…Are you even listening?” Newton says.

Hermann drags his eyes up to Newton’s face. He’s frowning, but in that teasing way he always has when he’s attempting to engage Hermann in an argument. Oh—Hermann must’ve missed his cue. “ _No_ ,” he says, forcing an annoyance he doesn’t quite feel into his tone, and Newton appears satisfied. “I’m watching the _presentation_. Like you should be, too.”

“Nerd,” Newton says, and sits back in his chair.

He doesn’t seem to notice the tenting of Hermann’s trousers. Small mercies.

The panel ends three long, long hours later, upon which (after bumping elbows with the correct people) Newton insists on dragging Hermann to a small deli across the street and shoving a chicken salad sandwich at him. They catch a taxi back to their hotel after that. Newton talks the entire time, but especially in the taxi. “Same old shit as last year,” he says. He’s jiggling his leg up and down. “Someone pretending like they know what they’re talking about—and _don’t_ say I’m just pissed they didn’t ask me to speak again. I would’ve said no.”

“Mm,” Hermann says.

They have the hotel elevator to themselves. Newton jabs the button for the sixth floor and leans against the mirrored wall. “I mean, _maybe_ I would’ve done it,” he says. “Last time they paid me. I wouldn’t bullshit everyone like the rest of these bastards.” Newton jabs the button again as if it'll somehow make the elevator go faster. His earlier oversharing has not escaped Hermann’s memory, or indeed even his constant thoughts; it was the conference of two years ago, after all, that Newton both gave a presentation and evidently received fellatio in a broom closet. “And it’d be _nice_ to feel appreciated for once.”

Newton flops face-first onto his twin bed the instant they step through their hotel room door, groaning and not even bothering to kick off his filthy boots first. Ordinarily, sharing a room with Newton at these sorts of things is nothing short of torture, but it comes in quite handy for what Hermann’s about to do. He hooks his cane over his bedpost before settling at the foot of Newton’s bed. “Newton,” he says.

“What do you want?” Newton says, voice muffled by his pillow.

Hermann places a tentative hand on the back of Newton’s calf. Newton immediately rolls over, squinting at him behind lopsided glasses. “Hermann?” he says.

“Er.” Hermann wets his lips. “Newton. May I…see?”

Newton frowns. “See what?”

“Your,” Hermann says. “Er. _Piercings_.”

Newton sits up; he stares at Hermann. “ _What_?”

“May I see them?” Hermann says.

Newton continues to stare at him.

“It’s just, I’m curious,” Hermann says, feeling his ears begin to heat up. “I’ve never—seen any before. Either kind.”

“Curious,” Newton echoes faintly. “You want—”

“If it’s not too much to ask, of course,” Hermann says, but Newton seems to have made up his mind before the words even leave Hermann’s mouth: he's tearing his shirt off over his head (not bothering to unbutton it first) and wriggling out of his skinny jeans, pushing them to his knees. Hermann blushes further when he realizes Newton has forgone underwear today. Another method of ensuring self-confidence, perhaps. His prick rises from a rather badly-tamed patch of dark pubic hair and sports a modest metal bar through its head. It’s also slowly stiffening.

“Sorry,” Newton squeaks. “Uh—biological response. You know.”

He looks vulnerable, and as a whole very attractive; Hermann's points of interest aside, Newton's sturdy shoulders and pectorals taper into a soft bit of waist that looks as if it'd be pleasant to grab, and the whole of him varies between tattooed and freckled. He's hardly vibrating with the self-confidence he'd so bragged about. Hermann reaches out to touch the piercing, but changes his mind, and instead hovers his hand over it awkwardly. “How long have you had it?” he says.

Newton coughs, and shifts on the mattress. Hermann can't tell whether it's from discomfort or embarrassment at being put on display like this. “Since my twenty-third birthday,” Newton says. "I thought it would be...fun?"

Hermann looks up at Newton’s chest, locking eyes with the kaiju inked across it. (Absurd little man.) The nipple piercings are fairly elaborate, but—to Hermann's surprise—entirely unrelated to kaiju. “And those?”

“Got those the year before,” Newton says. “I, uh, tried to do it D-I-Y style, but I didn’t want to, like, hit a nerve, so…”

Hermann examines the piercings for some time, while below him, Newton’s prick grows steadily harder, Newton’s cheeks grow steadily pinker, and Newton’s breathing grows steadily harsher. He’s clearly aroused, and Hermann has a hypothesis that it’s not merely for the reason he claimed. “Newton,” he says. “May I…?” He places his hand on Newton’s thigh, then drags it to the soft skin close to his prick.

Newton whimpers and slides down the bed. “ _Please_.”

They don’t have anything in the way of lubricant, nor does it seem to be something the hotel readily supplies in the bedside drawers, so Hermann decides to work Newton up slowly and use his resulting precome to slick the way. He’s interested in finding out if he _can_ work him up enough for that, anyway—and interested in the thorough examination of Newton’s body such a thing would require. Hermann reaches up to pinch one of his decorated nipples. “Do they make this sort of thing feel better?” he says.

“Fuck yeah they do,” Newton groans. Hermann begins to pinch the other, too, and Newton’s mouth drops open in a very lovely _o_. “Oh, shit, Hermann,” he says. “Shit—”

Hermann kisses him. He’s not planning on it, really, though he’d be lying if he said he hasn’t thought about it before. In the laboratory, when Newton is running his mouth about some _stupid_ theory; in the mess hall, when Newton is stealing his food and sips of his drink; in the middle of the conference, even, with Newton’s soft lips so close to Hermann’s ear, touching Hermann, that bloody _smile_ … One of Hermann’s hands continues to pinch and thumb over Newton’s nipple, while the other presses to the back of Newton’s head and that messy hair to urge him closer.

“Incorrigible little man,” Hermann breathes.

“ _Nnh_. Hermann—" Newton wraps his arms around his neck; he’s wriggling in place, desperate, Hermann thinks, for some friction. Hermann wraps his hand around Newton’s prick and gives it to him. He means to thumb at the piercing, to sweep precome down from his slit, but he can’t so much as prod the metal before he feels a sudden burst of sticky warmth over his hand. Oh—Newton’s _come_. “Oh,” Hermann says. He blinks down at Newton in surprise.

Newton is blushing a bright, splotchy red. “Sorry,” he says. He’s panting, his colorful chest heaving with it, his thighs splayed apart obscenely within the confines of the jeans bunched around his knees. “I was a little—uh, wound up. Gimme a couple minutes, and I’ll—"

Hermann shakes his head. “It’s no matter,” he says. “I can take care of it.”

He unbuckles his trousers and takes himself into his hand. “I would like to do it on you, if that’s alright with you,” he says. 

Newton nods.

Using Newton’s release to ease the way, and feeling _rather_ filthy about it, Hermann jerks himself off quite methodically and neatly. The bulk of it lands on Newton’s chest, right across those bloody nipple piercings, though some also spills on his soft abdomen; Hermann enjoys the way it looks on his colorful skin, as well Newton's surprised little moan. Another thing he's fantasized about doing for ages, really. He slumps down next to Newton when he’s finished. 

It’s been a strange day, really.

“Told you geeks dig ‘em,” Newton wheezes out.

“Shut up,” Hermann says.

**Author's Note:**

> find me over on horny twitter at hermanngayszler for more nonsense!


End file.
